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Bryan's Online StuffMuch of the content below is not art related or related to anything useful; enjoy.
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Jan. 1, 2009 Deer or Giraffe
Justyna has this printed on her pajamas she wears at her parents house. I do not know the age of them, but I'm curious what the animal is here. Please vote:
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December 21, 2008Wedding Stuff:
I'll post stuff in picture format with comment first; a lot of this is boring, but I promise to entertain at the end - see last picture and link. First picture is of the church Justyna and I will have our church wedding in. There is also a gallery of pictures and some background information and interesting overview picture in Polish.
Next picture is from yesterday and shows a basic state wedding room with official. From the left Izabel (translator), me, Justyna, Michal (front), Official (Zbigniew most likely), and Justyna's mom.
Translation: "this is a good time to kiss"
As promised - be sure to check out the super short video clip of the guy playing the saw at a wedding. I do not believe this to be typical in Poland; this is probably unique to the world. Its only a couple seconds long as I was in the middle of getting married and had to participate and pay attention to stuff in Polish. File size is 1MB and the little rift at the end is correct.
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December 19, 2008Wetlina Pictures
There aren't quite enough pictures of Wetlina to make a seperate categorie so I'll just have the 10 or so here. After a while I'll reduce the number of images until this update makes it to the archive. Wetlina is a very small town on the far south east part of Poland. Its history is robust and dramatic, but its rather quiet today with a population of 300 or so.
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May 25, 2008European Shopping cart technology and Mario Andretti drivers
The shopping carts in Europe have 4 wheel steering or it can be described as all wheels rotate on a vertical as well as horizontal axis. Its actually rather nice when the shopping cart is empty as you feel like you can participate in one of the X games somewhere doing some crazy drifting or something. Once you buy some breads, a kielbasa, and a jar of pickles it becomes obvious that those extra two rotating wheels will require you to use some more strength as your cart fills. By the time you have your canned tomato products, water, vodka, and plastic wrap you've got to be creative on your turns or you'll run over feet and crash into the corners of isles. Its not just me having this problem too. I've seen on multiple occasions people damaging product on the corner displays and the general exertion needed to steer a cart once heavily laiden with groceries. I'll get some pictures sometime to share of this.
Topic two is about Mario Andretti divers. Not everyone drives in Poland and infact few drive daily or commute in car. The result of this is a group of people on the road that take their driving very seriously. They will risk their own life and the lives of everyone within site to pass one car or perhaps get to the red light 2 seconds earlier than their unknowning competitor. I drive about once a week to either go to the hypermarket or perhaps a trip to the post office if I have a lot to send and Justyna and I take weekend trips here and there. In just that brief time on the road here in Poland I have seen the craziest stuff. Based on what I saw in the states over the years one would have to drive 500,000 miles to see the same crazy stuff you can get in 1000 kilometers here. I've seen people get on 2 wheels doing a "normal" U-turn, general traffic driving over 60mpg on inner city streets, getting passed by someone doing triple or more over the speed limit in town, but my personal favorite is when someone behind you sees that their car could fit infront of yours so they go to maximum performance, cut people off, drive in the other lane, blindly swerve, and burn 10 times more gas than is needed (gas here is $8 a gallon) just for the possibility of being 1 car closer to their destination. I've not seen the amount of daily driving athleticism seen here compared to the states except for when Bob Burke, driving a Larosas delivery truck, was trying to impress some girl that worked inside a Thriftway store. In general the drivers here are competent and have average consideration. I guess I just find it funny that people try to do wheelies on their way to the next red light in their Fiats and Skodas when gas is so expensive.
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May 4, 2008I've been experimenting with anaglyphs and stereograms. These are 3d Images. Its quite a simple theory, but it gets a little tricky in how I want to apply it. Right now I'm just goofing around with a single camera system and editing software. Eventually I want to remove any camera and computer technology from the work. My first round of results can be found at the anaglyph picture page which doesn't have a place yet so it'll just be linked from here for now. I would not recommend getting glasses just based on my page, but there is enough other content on just the internet to validate buying a pair of glasses. I'll add more to the above page as I progress with this.
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May 1, 2008Above is a link to the pictures with brief comment from my Pieniny Mountain trip. It went perfectly. Driving down from Warsaw was rather long as the 2 lane road to Krakow was under construction. We also hit Krakow at rush hour and then arrived in the mountains after dark. We awoke Saturday to quite a view.
Now that we have a car we've been using the shopping carts at the store a little bit as we can buy more than my backpack full of groceries. I've noticed that the general shopping cart technology is essentially the same as in the states except all 4 wheels rotate on a vertical axis instead of just the front two. This makes the shopping experience more physical and it seems to increase product damage too - from the rear of the carts swirving into the shelves. I'll have some more info on this as I get used to this design/feature.
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April 24, 2008I'm back to making the bed normal (no abstraction).
I'll have a Pieniny Mountain update soon here with lots of fun pictures - once I get back. On a side note its really cool being an artist. I don't ever consider myself actually working, but then again I never get a vacation or break. Every moment is used looking at little bits of light and in contemplation of composition and color theory. The Pieniny mountains will be a creative challenge I am sure. There was a broken link to youtube below that is now fixed; it was for the jozin z bazin song.
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March 12, 2008I'm back from Dublin. The Irish are very nice. I had some delay with the customs guy. He wanted to make sure I wasn't going to stay in Ireland longer than a couple days it seems. While there I talked to quite a few folks just to get to hear them; it was a treat. Since I was solo I didn't get to enjoy a frosty guiness at one of the many pubs. There will be some art from here at some point.
I've figured out a way (as an artist) to save time. Its called abstract bed making. Since I live with my fiance its important to make sure the bed is made everyday and this has proven to take quite a bit of time when you add it all up. So instead of hospital corners and perfectly arranged blankets I've been experimenting with an abstract method of layering of the sheets and blankets. Often a minimalistic approach can save time. I'd recommend it to anyone that lives alone, but its not working out well with a fiance.
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Jan. 16, 2008Its pigeon breeding season in Warsaw now. Its tough being a pigeon. I don't have much of an update today, but I did find this little gem - its the schematic for the first video game which happens to not be digital and was made in 1958. Space war happened some years later on a digital system.
Also check the Scientific study of spider web building while taking different substances.
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December 4, 2007It seems I'm getting joe jobbed. Between yesterday and today I received about 30 emails returned to my domain (whiteheadgallery.com) from someone who is using "identities" based on my website address. Basically thats when someone uses for example, "freddy2@whitebreadgallery.com" as a sender and sends out 20 billion spam emails; some of them get returned to me since they marked me as a sender and. My host provides a type of certification on outgoing emails which is now on; I'm not sure how it works at this time or if it works 100%. After some research and confirmation the actual sender is from the domain, opoular.com; and is selling pills for you probably can guess what. Its in China. I signed up at http://www.openspf.org to register my spf.
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November 30, 2007Stuff! My stuff is here :)
I feel completed now that I have my box of M&C, clear plastic puzzle thing, screaming chicken, and tornado in a bottle. None of my crap was really important to my everyday living, but it feels good to have my computer with english OS, coats, sentimental stuff, tablespoon/teaspoon measuring gizmo, and that box of Kraft M&C. Pretty much everything has fit into place and there seems to still be room to walk around; we'll see what happens once I've got 75 paintings filling it up.
One thing I've been paying attention to is stuff technology while here. Some items in Poland are more advanced than in the states and likewise. Below is a chart: number value indicates more advanced in that country with 1 being slightly more advanced and 10 meaning the other country is basically neolithic cave people.
| Technology: | U.S.A. | Poland |
| Potato Chip | 5 | |
| Window | | 2 |
| Bread | | 5 |
| Frozen Food | 3 | |
| Bus | | 2 |
| Banana | Same in both countries |
| Christmas Ornament | | 2 |
| Retail Christmas Sales Strategies | 9 | |
| Refrigeration and Ice | 10 | |
| City Centers | | 10 |
| Cheap Beer | | 2 |
| Wine | 3 | |
I'm sure there are some items missing so I might add them later. If you some reason you want me to examine a technology let me know - perhaps cheese or door knobs.
I rated refrigeration and ice technology in the states so highly because quite frankly its impossible to get anything more than a sliver of ice in your drink here. Perhaps when it gets real cold outside I can snag some icicles. Also the indoor coolers one might find in kiosk type stores are always off or not working and actually increase the temperature of the beverage because of the lights inside. Potato chips technology here also needs some work - basically there is 1 type of chip cut and 3 types of flavoring and 50 different brands of the same thing. Window technology in Poland is quite good. I have not seen anything that is not at least 2 panes. Our apartment has one wall that is basically all window and one can not feel a draft and these windows are original to the building (20-30 years old). One thing I actually kind of miss (in the beginning) is the Christmas music and displays on anything retail oriented - Polish Retail will catch up quickly without the political correctness in the states.
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October 21, 2007I've figured out what an American misses most this time of year in Poland.
Pumpkin Pie. I bought a 5kg pumpkin from the store. I have no clue why they sell pumpkins at the store, but they are there in small quantities and it doesn't seem anyone is buying them either. The one I got is mostly orange, but the others are mostly yellow or greenish/orange. At 90 grosz per kg it cost about $1.50 for the pumpkin which is a great deal. After some conversation with my grandmother we figured out a game plan for preparing the pumpkin for a pie.
The pie is in the oven now, but it was quite an ordeal getting everything needed. Firstly Poles don't eat traditional american type pies (9inch pans with flour/butter crust) so it was a slight challenge locating a pie pan. The pumpkin was not a challenge to find, but nutmeg proved to be very elusive. MarcPol had nutmeg, but the exotic food store in the Arkadia Mall only had the actual nut that is ground into nutmeg. Justyna was quickly able to translate the ingrediants for me so cinnamon, ginger, sweetened-dehydrated milk, and cloves were easy. I bought a cheap measuring cup in metric units and Justyna and I marked off 1, 2, and 3 cup levels based on ml.
Here is the recipe I used:
Artist Quality Pumpkin Pie (Real American Style made abroad)
Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups pumpkin mush*
2/3 cup suger (white or brown)
3/4 cup condensed sweet milk
1+ tbsp flour
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon + 1/2 tsp for the top to make a nice pattern
1 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp cloves
3 eggs
To make pumpkin mash cut your pumpkin into several pieces and remove the fuz and seeds on the inside. Place pieces in a large water tight pan and cook at 325 F for 2.5 - 3 hours. Remove and check to make sure they are soft and pumpkin is easily removed with a spoon and no tough string is present. Freeze excess pumpkin in 2.5 cup bags; use 2.5 cups of mush without excess water per pie. Mix all ingredients together and blend with a blender for a couple mins. It should be orange and smooth. Cook at 400 for 1 hour and do a shake test (middle should be firm and a toothpick will come out clean). Allow to cool and serve with real whipped creams.
Here is a picture of one of the only pumpkin pies in Poland. Also another picture of a piece of red bell pepper shaped like a heart that was found inside the pepper after cutting.
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