At the risk of becoming a full-time shill for other people’s artwork, I must mention Livefeed, a fascinating installation that’s currently on display here at Texas State University. A collaboration between Jeff Shore and Jon Fisher, it features video sequences made by mechanically moving tiny video cameras through miniature diaramas. A lush, cinematic soundtrack accompanies the video, and is further enhanced by changing illumination from the boxes that contain the dioramas, as well as several frame drums on the back wall, played by electromechanical arms.

As a musician, I was engaged by the audio and the way it mirrored the imagery. As a technician, I was entranced by the intricacy of the installation and how well its diverse parts were made to engage and work together. It’s well worth a visit in person, if possible, as that’s the only way to get the full effect of everything that’s going on. If, however, you’re not convenient to the University, you can also see the work at the Livefeed live feed, or read a review here.

This one wraps up on Wednesday, so come see it while you can!

There’s a superb new photography exhibit up at the Witliff Gallery here at Texas State University. Called Lightning in a Bottle, it’s a collection of photos the gallery has recently acquired. My favorites are two wonderfully evocative images by Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison: The Sower and Turning To Spring. (There’s also a book of their photography available from Amazon, which is now on my wishlist: The Architect’s Brother.) Annie Leibovitz also has an image up, and there are many more alternately intriguing, macabre, engaging and disturbing images displayed.

If you live in Central Texas, the exhibit is well worth a visit. (Hours are posted here.)

I currently lack the order of mind to really put down what I’d like to about Easter. With all the moment-to-moment demands of four children, I seldom feel that I’m able to attend as fully to lent, Holy Week, and Easter itself as I’d like to. Fortunately, there are several wonderful churches in San Marcos that collaborate on a devotional walk through the hill country during lent. There are fourteen spots for reflection along the walk, pattered on the Stations of the Cross. Thinking that walking this path and reading the meditations would be an ideal way to have the kids participate a bit more fully in the holiday, Kathy and I took them out there yesterday. Even that, however, was an abortive attempt, as the rain came pelting down in torrents just as we reached the halfway point of the walk. We scampered back to the car, cold and sodden, and drove back home to make hot chocolate and dry off.

So, my prayer this Easter is that God would accept the meager offerings which are all we seem able to muster these days — grace interrupted by noisy burps, half-completed devotional walks, prayers snatched from the voracious fangs of our calendar as we walk from one place to another, and a too-occasional breathed “thank you” for the beauty of spring. We give to God what we have, what we are, even when that seems more like passing on a debt or scraping something weeks-dead from the highway and putting a bow on it than it does giving a gift of value.

He is risen. He is risen indeed. Thank heaven for it.

Here are a few more worthwhile meditations on this zenith of the Christian year: Fanny’s Easter Thoughts, and a sermon Barry heard at the Salisbury cathedral ten years ago.

I picked up a PSP at Target on Thursday. I had preordered one a month ago from PCConnection, but they apparently weren’t going to be able to get it out in anything like a timely fashion. Since I live in a town that’s big enough to have a couple stores getting shipments, but small enough that I wouldn’t have to fight my way through frothing masses, I strolled down to Target Thursday morning. As I was paying, they hit me with the usual “Would you like to apply for a Target card and save 10% on your purchase?” Why, yes, I would! I ended up not having to wait for shipping, and still got it for less than the list price. Sweet.

So, impressions: it’s a very polished, lovely piece of hardware. The reviews I’ve read have faulted its convergence features. This isn’t entirely fair, since the video/photo/music features on the unit itself are quite good; however, the software that runs on one’s computer to get those things into the PSP is still a weak point. The screen is outstanding, and the games are head and shoulders above anything else that’s out there in the portable arena. Kathy is already hooked on Lumines (and soundly beating my high scores by about 4x).

The one thing I find myself wanting until Sony adds more complete PDA-style features to the thing is a utility that will scan the Mac OS X Address Book and create a little JPG business card for each of the entries therein, allowing access to one’s contact info from the PSP. (Developers, feel free to hijack this idea — I’ve already sent it to the guy who makes iPSP, the third-party sync software for the Mac.) Making JPG renders of one’s iCal info would be great too, though more of a technical challenge than the Address Book integration would be.

• Emily got the part of Willy Wonka in her school choir’s upcoming production of the Roald Dahl classic. We’re still a little vague on what form this production will be taking, but we’re very excited for and proud of her. We’ll post more details as we find them out.
• Yesterday I watched Liam play Halo 2 against 3 teenagers who formed a team against him. In spite of the fact that he was using a somewhat crippled controller, he smoked them. It warms a geek-Dad’s heart.
• Spring has officially sprung, which of course means it’s time to do battle with the organisms that have taken up residence in the pool over the cold months. We spent a fair bit of time and and a perhaps immoderate amount of money on this over the weekend, but was rewarded this morning by the sight of a body of water than is once again more blue than green. (You still can’t see more than a foot into it, though.)
• Dan is fixing up his car and gearing up to leave us. He’ll be moving to North Carolina to stay with one of his friends there for a while. We’re sorry to see him go, as it’s been a treat for us to have him around, and for the kids to get to know their uncle.
• In order to save up time for our England trip this summer, I worked over Spring Break and had the most amazingly productive week ever. It’s remarkable what one can get done when the phone doesn’t ring, people don’t stop by your desk, and the opportunities for distraction are few.

Today is my 35th birthday, and dear friends have been sending wishes throughout the day. While Chris deserves an honorable mention for sending along a delightful photo of Liam with his finger rammed up his (Liam’s) nose to the third joint, my favorite bit of birthday prose so far comes from Fanny:

Rumour has it, dear sir, that today be your birthday. Daniel suggested I send you a “congratulatory message.” Here it goes:

First off, I want to congratulate you on having decided, one day way back when, to be born. This shows not only good judgement on your part, but also that you know how to have a good time. I mean, this Earth place is pretty swell, ain’t it? Give or take a little sorrow here, a little loneliness there, and those times in the middle of the night when you stub your toe on a piece of furniture…

Secondly, I want to congratulate you on your chosen date of birth. This really shows remarkable wisdom and discerment. March is a fine month, what with the onset of spring and all, and folks are now reasonably recovered from the holidays to start hankerin’ for a little partyin’. And here you swoop right in to give us a reason to. I mean, wow. Plus, the 10th is definitely a most worthy date, vastly superior to the 9th or the 11th. Ten is such a nice number–it’s so easy to multiply and divide things by ten. (Though I have much regard for this date of March 10th, still I must say that March 12th is finer in all regards. Sorry.)

Finally, I want to congratulate you on having maintained, year after year for I don’t know how long, this habit of being alive, which demontrates admirable stick-to-it-iveness and get-up-and-go-ness. Also, again, it shows that you know when you’re having a good time, which is more than can be said for most people.

As you have amply proven yourself to be a guy who knows how to enjoy himself, I hope and pray you will do so today, as you most certainly deserve it, and that the people around you will help facilitate the good times. Who knows? maybe someday I’ll be around to share a celebratory brew on some such occasion. Stranger things have happened.

Happy Birthday, Sean!

Sincerely,
Fanny

Thanks for the delightful wishes, Fanny! I’ll look forward to hoisting a pint with you whenever you find yourself down Texas way.

There’s a very interesting post over on Wonderland. It’s a loose trascription of Raph Koster’s keynote at the 2005 Game Developer’s Conference, and covers such ground as the continuity between entertainment and art, the value (and peril) of interactivity, and what makes things fun. The latter was of special interest for me: while I like games a fair bit, I also often get tired of a game before I’ve reached the end. Raph points out that much of the fun of a game comes in mastering something new — when a game stops giving you new things to learn or mechanics to master, it quickly pales.

Anyway, there’s enough good stuff in the keynote that I’ve added Raph Koster’s book to my list of things to read.

My buddy Ross has a new venture: Boom Studios, a comic book publishing company that promises great things. Ross is very much an advocate of the creative folks involved in the comic-making process, and was having good success with Atomeka, his previous venture. He’s also been teaching himself how to create web sites as part of this process, and is getting to be pretty capable!

I’m so proud! (Sniff.)

Today I was rooting around in the shed and noticed The Amazing Pneumatic Cannon leaning up against the wall. I’ve not had it out since we moved to San Marcos, and when I determined that Liam had no memory of it whatsoever, decided that the time to exhume it had come.

I was a bit concerned that after years of neglect, the sprinkler valve might have given out altogether. I tried pressurizing it with no ammunition, and was disappointed to find that the air didn’t come out all in a rush, but leaked out slowly like a 3 liter of Sprite that was just barely open. “Sorry, kids. I don’t think it’s going to work.” I tried one more time driving the pressure up a little higher, and was delighted this time to here the distinctive reverberating tone the canon generates as it pushes high pressure air down its length. “WOO! We’re in business!”

We started out at about 50PSI, shooting a Beanie Baby about halfway down the street. We tried several different items, culminating in a potato at 75PSI. (Though the valve is rated for 100PSI, and the pipe for 230PSI, I wasn’t sure I trusted the PVC welds after all of that time in storage.) Remarkably, the potato flew more than a block, ending in a moist splatter on the driveway of a nearby elementary school. The kids were 3/4 of the way down the street to catch it, and watched it sail far over their heads — probably a good thing, given the force with which it evidently landed.

I’d forgotten how much fun that thing is, and was delighted to find it working well after all this time. We’re looking forward to having it out again for some more fun with our homemade artillery.

One of the most dramatic bits of flora in the Texas springtime is the redbud tree. While a there are a wide variety of plants that break forth into profligate bloom around this time of year, warming up with scales sung in pale green and eventually bursting full voice into florid arias of blue, purple, crimson, and orange, the redbud takes a different approach. It bides its time through the winter as all its leaves fall off, leaving only a skeletal disordered collection of sticks, looking for all the world as though you could break them down into kindling with a single swift kick or swipe of your fist.

When spring comes, the redbud doesn’t succumb to the pressure of its peers and sprout green. Rather, it skips photosynthesis altogether and bursts directly into extravagant bloom, its namesake buds festooning all the upper branches, shooting up, down, sideways. Because even amid all of this growth there’s still not a single leaf to be seen, it looks more like some kind of delightfully overenthusiastic elementary school project — crepe paper glued onto a badly-tied bundle of sticks your four-year-old child found on the playground — than it does a real tree.

These trees put me in mind of the Old Testament story about the sprouting of Aaron’s staff. When some of the Israelites were questioning Moses and Aaron’s leadership, God had each of the tribes bring a staff to the tent where they worshipped and leave them there overnight, telling the people that the staff of the man God chose to lead would sprout during the night. When morning came, Aaron’s rod had not only sprouted, but, as if to drive the point home, had also put forth buds, flowered, and produced ripe almonds. (This staff, along with the tablets on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed and a jar of manna, were later kept in the Ark of the Covenant.)

Thus, while all the glory of spring is a delightful affirmation of life, the sprouting of the redbud’s blossoms from these apparently dead bundles of sticks reminds me even more specifically of God’s involvement with and favor for his people. Selah.