Check out this thought-provoking look at the evolution, immensity, and possibilites of the Internet, by Wired magazine. There are 5 pages and it's a very interesting read...
"This planet-sized computer is comparable in complexity to a human brain.
Both the brain and the Web have hundreds of billions of neurons (or Web pages).
Each biological neuron sprouts synaptic links to thousands of other neurons, while each Web page branches into dozens of hyperlinks.
That adds up to a trillion "synapses" between the static pages on the Web.
The human brain has about 100 times that number - but brains are not doubling in size every few years,...
...the Machine is."
(This unexplainable similarity on different scales is another example of our Fractal Reality.)
This is a pretty cool website I saw on Posthuman Blues that allows you to apply different destructive graphic simulations to any web page! This is such an awesome idea.
When I was a kid, I thought that having to use encyclopedias & going to the library to research any given topic was a real pain in the ass. The Internet (despite the abundance of garbage & ridiculousness) has already clearly revolutionized the human race & is the catalyst for profound changes to our world.
Even for people my age and older who grew up without the capability of digital search engines, the almost magical ease of The Web is still easy to take for granted. The volume of knowledge (& stupidity) existing in the virtual realm is amazing, especially when you consider the rate at which it's increasing.
Despite all the effort and creativity that's gone into it, it's always possible that a natural or cosmic event could destroy mankind's digital archive- & everything else we've worked for- in an instant.
People are currently trying to ensure preservation of cultural artifacts like the Internet. However, it's possible that tens of thousands of years into the future, it will be something like the granite sculptures of Mount Rushmore that will have more of a lasting legacy than our virtual mountains of digital data.
On the other hand... Maybe by that time in the future, mankind will have begun colonizing space with spacetime warp drive systems & we'll have a Galactic Internet among the stars, instantly connected through quantum entanglement.
Either way, I (probably) won't be around...
so it doesn't really matter.
:P
The computer uses a feedback loop of image recognition algorithms to find features in the imagery, and then enhance them. The Google engineers dubbed the process "Inceptionism," because the computer keeps going deeper into the image to discern features & patterns. Even if there isn't really any recognizable elements in the visual data, the computer will still process the information & try to find familiar forms. The images that are filtered through the software often end up with a trippy, bizarre, or dream-like appearance.
This research can give us a lot of insight into the nature of consciousness and altered states of all types. By modeling the way the brain recognizes & processes patterns, we will develop a deeper understanding of our own minds.
There is a web app I saw on Gizmodo that takes the Google code and allows you to upload your own photos & apply the different filters.
There's no control over the parameters for each filter, but it's fun to plug different pics in and see how they turn out.
I put a bunch of my own photos through the various filters and created a gallery of images. The results were mostly pretty interesting. My favorites were made using the "Botanical Dimensions" filter.
There are more images in the linked gallery, below.
Here is a crazy rendering of my girlfriend Loretta. The original photo was taken by her friend Tessa from Colour Contessa Photography. I think she looks like an otherworldly Aztec goddess.
Anyone can submit artwork that depicts the amorphous phenomenon we call The Internet. Little kids can make drawings on the same page as professional artists like myself, or anyone who feels like being creative.
I thought it was a cool idea & wanted to make something... so I did. The general idea immediately popped in my head. I wanted to make an image of the colorful contents of the web melding with the increasingly digitized mind, in a synchronized explosion of cognitive novelty.
"A digital self-portrait representing the mind integrating with & transcending physical technology through immersion into the realm of pure energy. The Internet is the beginning of a conduit into a non-local experience of consciousness."
With the many colors bursting through the circuit boards, I wanted to suggest the rich, diverse content of the web & the countless individual personalities that participate in it. The ancient "Flower of Life" pattern was added as a element of order and unity that the mind can coalesce from seeming chaos. The encroaching digital tendrils could be signaling an enlightening process... or they could be enveloping a digital death's head. I'd prefer to think mankind is going to advance as a result of our technological knowledge, ensuring better chances of survival, & not worse.
Anyway, that is my rendition of The Internet. Vote for it on the website & see the other drawings:
Even though I'm way too squeamish about certain things to be a doctor, the body as a living system is a source of amazement for me. When you look closely at the components & functions of our bodies, on an abstract level they are fascinating.
On Reddit I saw this mesmerizing closeup photo of a living human brain, with recursive levels of blood vessels covering the surface:
click image to see all the amazing detail
This seemingly random & chaotic array of organic connections is also found on the cellular scale. The brain's neurons are continually growing a biochemical network that somehow produces the phenomenon we call "consciousness":
Scientist finally have the technology to begin mapping the vast number of connections that make up the brain. It's obvious why the neural network couldn't be modeled before the existence of computer processing like we have today:
The external world also seems to exhibit this pattern of fractal self-similarity & connectivity, even on cosmic scales. The Millenium Simulation modeled the connectivity of theoretical dark matter between galaxies. One the resulting visualizations is this connective network of galactic clusters:
This fractal pattern of interconnected nodes is now manifesting in mankind's most transformative invention, The Internet. The Opte Project has mapped out the Universal Mind that's being formed by the myriad connections of the World Wide Web:
We truly inhabit The Web of Maya- a light show of the mind's individual experience, created by the interplay of brain cells & the enmeshed energies that affect them.
It's weird how the internet & other mass media is giving rise to so many 'personalities' that become fairly well-known. Andy Warhol's quote "In the future, everyone will be famous for five minutes" looks more & more visionary since the rise of the web.
South Park had a typically awesome episode with a bunch of internet celebrities fighting each other. Speaking of which, the director's cut of the classic Imagination Land episode will be on Sunday.
There are 100 billion neurons in the human brain. There are about 7 billion people on earth- maybe not enough to make a 'brain' yet, but the levels of connectivity permeating our lives is accelerating faster than any one person can fully grasp.
The world's becoming enveloped by broadband, satellites, wi-fi, cellular communication, and all the other magical ways people are exchanging information using pulses of patterned energy. An external hive mind is now steadily increasing in connectivity and content as each moment passes.
When I was a kid in grade school, I knew there had to be a better way to learn and get new ideas than just the Encyclopedia or the Library. In the days before the emergence of the World Wide Web, though, I had no idea what that improved system could be. I just knew back then that getting information solely by looking it up in books really, really sucked.
Now, we have instantaneous information, creativity, and communication through "The Web". Although I'm satisfied with the current state of the internet & its capabilities, the march of progress continues. As technology becomes more ubiquitous and wireless, it's becoming a networked cloud, continuously sharing the collective experiences of humanity.
It seems we are becoming permanent participants in a technological mindstream. Perhaps we will soon be linked up to the hive mind via our iThink and be able to learn even the most difficult lessons instantly. Maybe one day we'll even shed physical networking systems altogether, when we discover how to tap into the Akashic Field. There is, of course, the crappier possibility that humanity will be destroyed before any of this happens.
The future of computing, networking, and how they relate to a global consciousness is something that is compelling to think about. These are links to great articles about the coming Overmind that have caught my attention so I wanted to post them:
Many years ago, I had found a web page with quotes & insights from an esoteric Buddhist text, along with those by some of the greatest scientific minds of modern times. It was an astounding collection of ideas.
I have studied most of the world's religions in depth, have read countless works of philosophy, & studied the many mysteries of the Universe that science has discovered so far. However, this single page contained the most profound, penetrating wisdom I had ever seen.
One day, when trying to re-visit the page, I found that the site had been taken down!!! I was alarmed that this amazing wisdom had vanished from the Web. Some time later, after searching the Internet for some keywords that I had remembered from the text, I finally found another site that had posted the content in its entirety.
Determined not to lose this information again, I bookmarked it, downloaded all of the page's contents on my own computer, & I'm now also going to mirror it here on my blog. This way, there's a better chance that people will see it & it will be available in the future. So, here it is... read these mind-shattering insights carefully & perhaps bookmark it for later contemplation, or share it, to open the eyes of others.
The Secret Doctrine
The primary source for this document is The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects by Alexandra David-Neel & Lama Yongden. Alan
Watts calls this work "a wonderfully lucid account of the Madhyamika (or
'middle-way') School of Buddhism, a method of meditation and
enlightenment which was worked out sometime between 150 and 250 AD by
the great Indian sage and pundit, Nagarjuna." Holomovement
The world is movement.
"The tangible world is movement, say the Masters, not a collection of
moving objects, but movement itself. There are no objects 'in
movements', it is the movement which constitutes the objects which
appear to us: they are nothing but movement."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects
"Wholeness is flowing movement. With the hologram, the movement of
interference patterns of coherent light enfolds a subtle range of
structures and orders. In a similar, but unthinkably vaster, way, the
whole movement or "holomovement" of the universe carries the implicate
order and allows us to see and experience our four-dimensional
space-time world."
- Briggs and Peat, Looking Glass Universe
Movement arises from flashes of energy.
"This movement is a continued and infinitely rapid succession of flashes
of energy (in Tibetan tsal or shoug). All objects perceptible to our
senses, all phenomena of whatever kind and whatever aspect they assume,
are constituted by a rapid succession of instantaneous events."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects
"Mind, I believe, exists as fleeting energy in parallel universes. The
universe we perceive consists of the overlap of these fleeting flashes
of energy. The patterns create mind as surely as they create matter.
Both the existence of matter and the perception of it are the same
thing."
- Fred Allen Wolf, Parallel Universes
A single result arises from many causes.
"Nothing is produced by one single cause; the combination of several
causes is always necessary to bring about a result. The seed without the
co-operation of earth, dampness, light, etc. will never become a tree."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects
"Though the universe is in some sense determined, it is in another more
important sense multidimensional, creative, and indeterminate,
constantly unfolding new 'forms' or subtotalities which are expressions
of the whole. The galaxy, the city, the corporation, even the very cells
of a human's body are in a ceaseless energy exchange like water flowing
through a vortex."
- Briggs and Peat, Looking Glass Universe
The microcosm and macrocosm are intimately connected.
"The cycle of Interdependent Origins thus takes place in everything,
everywhere, in the infinitely small as in the infinitely great. Its
development does not take place progressively in time; the twelve
causes...are always present, co-existent and interdependent, their
activity is interconnected, and they only exist on with the other."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects
"The development of structures in what is called microevolution mirrors
the development of structures in macroevolution and vice versa.
Microstructures and macrostructures evolve together as a whole."
- Erich Jantsch, Creative Evolution
The World as Mental Projection
"Mind" is a description not a thing.
"During his meditations, while watching his mind with close attention,
he [the student studying the Secret Teachings] has attained Lhag Thong
and 'seeing more' than most men, he has contemplated the continual
arising and disappearance of ideas, of volitions, of memories, and so
on, which pass like a procession of short-lived bubbles floating down a
river. He has realized for himself that 'mind' is only a word indicating
a series of mental phenomena."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects
"For the operation of the nervous system, there is no inside or outside,
but only maintenance of correlations that continuously change (like the
indicator instruments in a submarine)."
"Self-consciousness, awareness, mind - these are phenomena that take place in language.."
"'Mind' is not an entity but can be ascribed to a system exhibiting regular behavior."
- Humberto Maturana, The Tree of Knowledge
The apparent world is a creation of the observer.
"It is this world which we watch like a play which unfolds outside of
ourselves while, in fact, there is nothing there but a canvas bearing
many colored patterns, which we have woven and printed in ourselves
according to the indications of our erroneous knowledge."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects
"The apparent world, the one which is perceived, with its figures, its
brightness, its colors, is a psychical product, a creation of the
observer. The figures seen on the vault of heaven are neither the
celestial bodies, nor the true clouds or the falling stars, but are only
effigies which the observer's psyche has created and localized how and
where it can."
- Vasco Ronchi, Optics, The Science of Vision
All that we perceive are our own projections.
"The greatest saint, even if he has sacrificed a thousand times all that
he held most dear, even his life itself, for love of others, for that
of a God or for a noble ideal, remains a prisoner of samsara if he has
not understood that all that is a childish game, empty of reality, a
useless phantasmagoria of shadows which his own mind projects on the
infinite screen of the Void"
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects
"...All sensation will be the reconstruction of objects in space and
time from apparent or virtual images of those objects recorded in the
cortex. All that we sense as 'out there' is projected from our 'witness'
of the recorded virtual images."
- Fred Alan Wolf, Parallel Universes
Memories are painted over our screen of perception.
"This root originally free from any admixture, origin of the illusory
world in which we live is a fleeting contact with some unknowable
instant of Reality, some indefinable force which the vasanas [memories]
obscure at once, superimposing on it the screen on which the images
which we see, are painted."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects
"Consciousness unfolds like a computer displaying its contents on a
screen. A considerable part of that display comes from the past and is
confused with the self."
- Briggs and Peat, Looking Glass Universe
Our Illusory Self
Thought encloses itself in its own world.
"What then is this activity from which one ought to abstain? It is the
disordered activity of the mind which, unceasingly, devotes itself to
the work of a builder erecting ideas, creating an imaginary world in
which it shuts itself like a chrysalis in its cocoon."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects
"Thought forms a world of its own in which it is everything. It rectifies
itself and imagines there's nothing else but what it...thinks about."
- David Bohm, in RE-VISION 1
We are the many fragments of others.
"The Secret Teachings lead the pupil further. They teach him to look,
with the same serene indifference at the incessant working of his mind
and the physical activity displayed by the body. He ought to succeed in
understanding, in noting that nothing of all that is from him, is him.
He, physically and mentally, is the multitude of others.
"This 'multitude of others' includes the material elements - the ground,
one might say - which he owes to his heredity, to his atavism, then
those which he has ingested, which he has inhaled from before his birth,
by the help of which his body was formed, and which, assimilated by
him, have become with the complex forces inherent in them, constituent
parts of his being.
"On the mental plane, this 'multitude of others' includes many beings
who are his contemporaries: people he consorts with, with whom he chats,
whose actions he watches. Thus a continual inhibition is at work while
the individual absorbs a part of the various energies given off by those
with whom he is in contact, and these incongruous energies, installing
themselves in that which he considers his 'I', form there a swarming
throng."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects
"The origin of chaos is in our fragmented, atomistic thought. Only when
thought is not there would it be possible to perceive what is beyond
thought."
- David Bohm, in RE-VISION 1
We do not exist as a soul or individual self.
"The answer to those that imagine that Buddhist salvation consists in
the annihilation of the 'ego', at the death of the 'person', is that, as
Buddhism denies the existence of an 'ego' or a soul, whatever be the
name given to it, there cannot be any question of the annihilation of
that which is held to be non-existent.
"In reality there is annihilation but it is that of false views, of
ignorance, and more exactly of the belief in the existence of an 'ego'
which is independent, homogeneous and permanent, a belief which deforms
our understanding of the world in deforming our mental vision."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects
"Humans come to think of the individual self as a fundamentally separate
'thing' which persists despite an immensity of changes that take place
in one's life."
- Briggs and Peat, Looking Glass Universe
Beyond Thought
The void is an absence of anything we can conceive of.
"Void is understood as a state in which the elements do not produce any
combination, give rise to no phenomenon, a state in which only forces,
latent and non-manifest, exist. Being the sphere of complete absence of
manifestation, the Void is inconceivable."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects
"Nothingness' is not the vacuum of physics, loaded with geometry and
field fluctuations; it is a nothingness devoid of structure, law or
plan..."
- John Wheeler, "Frontiers of Time"
Insight is a process that bypasses thought.
"To go beyond virtue and vice, opinions and beliefs is to go beyond the
mental constructions which are built up by the mind, unceasingly, and to
recognize, by transcendent insight, that they are void of reality. It
is also to recognize, by transcendent insight, that which has been
imagined as practicing virtue, surrendering to vice, as holding opinions
and elaborating theories, as traveling towards a goal and reaching the
goal, is nothing but an inconsistent phantom, devoid of reality."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects
"Insight is an intelligence beyond any of the energies that could be
defined in thought. Insight directly transforms matter; it sort of
by-passes thought as of little consequence."
- David Bohm, in RE-VISION 1
Consciousness continually creates the universe.
"According to the Secret Teachings the origin of things is not situated
in any place or moment of past time; it is produced now, at each
instant, in our minds. At every moment the subjective image which is the
world, arises in our mind only to sink back and dissolve in it the
moment after, like the 'waves which arise from the sea and fall back
into it'.
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects
"Not in the dim past but continuously by conscious mind is the miracle of creation wrought."
- Sir Arthur Eddington
The Great Liberation
"...The well-informed dreamer may cease taking pleasure in dreaming. He
may stop imitating those dreamers who, enjoying the phantasmagoria which
they watch and in which they play a part, persist in wishing to remain
asleep. In truth, why do the dreamers fear awakening, why do they
imagine in advance other dreams of hells and heavens which await them
after death? It is because they fear that with the disappearance of the
'images seen in dreams', the illusory 'Ego' which is an integral part of
them will disappear. They have not yet perceived that the real face of
this chimerical 'Ego' is the face of Death. As long as the idea of this
impermanent Ego lasts, this simple mass of elements which various causes
have brought together and which other causes will separate, death also
subsists. The Dhammapada alludes to the disappearance of this phantom
from the field of our mental activity when it refers to whom 'death does
not see', that is, he for whom death does not exist.
"To wake up...The Buddhas have done nothing else than this, and it is this awakening which has made them become Buddhas."
- The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects
"History is the nightmare from which I am trying to awaken."
- James Joyce, Ulysses
"There are moments when one feels free from one's own identification
with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments one imagines
that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at
the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable;
life and death flow into one, and there is neither evolution nor
destiny; only Being."
- Albert Einstein
"Subtle, sparkling, dazzling, glorious, and radiantly awesome, in
appearance like a mirage moving across a landscape in spring-time in one
continuous stream of vibrations... That is the radiance of thine own
true nature."
- Bardo Thodol
In high school I wrote a similar program for the TI-85 calculator I was using for some of my later classes. I made a chart naming a bunch of my friends, teachers, etc & their characteristics. I entered it into the calculator so it would ask you questions and tell you who you were thinking about.
That was one of the ridiculous ways I creatively passed the time in Study Hall back in the day.
Nowadays I try to avoid programming & code if at all possible. Graphic interfaces are much more appealing to me.
The title of this post is true, graphic design is my passion.
I have been a professional designer for my entire adult life, and not a day goes by where I don't strive to be creative in some way.
However, this life-long passion is not what prompted this post. It was actually another aspect of my love of creativity... my amusement by truly awful or ridiculous design.
I saw this animated GIF on The Weird Wide Web and appreciated its hilariously irony:
It turned out better than I thought. You can see all kinds of interesting details on this arachnid's underside. I love being able to see things right in front of me in a deeper perspective.
This weekend, I also went to Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania.
I was there once before with both my parents. My Mom wanted to go again, with the rest of my siblings for Mother's Day weekend. That place is awesome and I always enjoy observing the wonders of the natural world.
On my last trip I took a ton of photos. There is so much to look at and amazing things in the details of the plants & the man-made structures, as well. My little nephews came too this time, so I was running around & having some fun with them. I still got to take alot of nice pics, though. They are in an album on my Picasa page & can be downloaded to use for desktop images:
The only "protest"-type event I've ever been to was the Rally to Restore Sanity in DC. Although the overall intention was humorous, it was a statement by 100's of thousands of citizens that the ignorant buffoonery so prevalent in American politics isn't going to be suffered in silence.
The fact that so many people are now willing to demonstrate against these anachronistic monarchies and harsh military dictatorships is a sign of a threshold of empowerment being reached for the average person around the world.
One interesting, yet overlooked, development of this particular situation is reinforcement of the premise that access to the Internet & media is a basic right of free people everywhere.
Even an iron-fisted government like Egypt has proven incapable of completely shuttering communication. Besides finding work-arounds, the population will just go friggin nuts. Modern society is totally emeshed in the World Wide Web for social contacts, business, information, creatvity, etc.
If it's come to the point were the government is trying to turn off the series of tubes leading to The Internets, well,... things are probably going to get crazy...
I'm pretty well-versed in conspiracy theories & outlandish ideas of all kinds.
"The universe is not only stranger than we imagine;
but stranger than we CAN imagine."
-J. B. S. Haldane
Although all kinds of strange things may be possible, we still have to use our senses and critical thinking to understand our world as accurately as possible.
That is why ideas like the "flat earth" movement drive me nuts. It's just stupid. There's nothing about the reality that we experience that would make it probable that the Earth is a flat disc. Matter naturally accumulates into a sphere, as gravity pulls mass toward all other mass. Look at water droplets, bubbles, etc.
When looking at other celestial bodies it's clear that they have to be spherical in nature. This is self-evident, unless you believe that there is a massive conspiracy involving literally every space agency, astronomer, & anyone who's ever looked through a telescope.
As with so many things in today's interconnected world of limitless digital media, it's tough to tell who is a troll and who really believes this stuff. "The Flat Earth Society" is as ridiculous as a "Moon is Made of Green Cheese" society. Yeah ok, there is a infinitesimal chance it's true, & we've been fed a vast web of lies, but it's so unlikely & defies common sense that it's really just silly.
Then, there is a whole new level of craziness people take their theories to, whether or not it's something they truly believe or are making a joke.
I saw this funny approach to out-doing conspiracy theorists using the Moon, & the comments led me to the amazing image at the top of this post. The 'flat earth' theory seems plausible compared to that configuration. It illustrates the absurd notion that the Universe & the cosmos are actually inside the Earth.
It's a hysterically bizarre & unlikely view of the world. I refuse to accept that someone could actually believe that reality is organized as depicted in that image. It has to be a joke, right???
However, the same the question arises in this model, as in the accepted scientific view of the Universe- What is 'outside' of the boundaries? The image at top depicts a hard boundary between the crust of the earth and... blackness? In actuality, the idea of cosmic boundaries may not even apply. I think the Universe is a fractal pattern, infinitely self-enclosed with no discernible edge. Our brain cannot formulate the idea of something without edges or definition.
That is why people come up with simple explanations of the way the world works- because the truth is so complex & unimaginable that the mind is powerless to truly envision it all.
I came across this absolutely mind-blowing short film (13 min.) while scrolling through the many inanities of the Facebook news feed. I reposted it, with just a Keanu Reeves-like "Woah."
It was written, directed & produced by Lubomir Arsov, and it is a work of genius by those involved.
The movie attempts to rip apart the facade of maya, the illusion that envelopes our society & our perceptions. This cosmic web of apparently unique phenomena is actually a singular Unity, an underlying energy at the quantum level. This infinite array of interacting, energetic patterns only seems to be a bunch of different things on the level of human perception.
The virtual light show in our skull creates the appearance of difference. Good, bad, neutral, moral, immoral, positive, negative, horrible, wonderful, indifferent... they are all modes of that fundamental base energy that has no human characteristics (but somehow still gives rise to those characteristics in the human form).
“No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven
unless its roots reach down to hell.”
-C.G. Jung
IN-SHADOW explores the darker sides of human nature & culture, before annihilating it all in a psychedelic, spiritual ascension. Systems of control on a personal level, as well as on a social scale, are unmasked. Industries such as pharmaceuticals, factory farming, mass media, fast food, banking, politics (yes, politics is clearly an industry), military, and technology are all shown as interconnected systems with negative aspects that are manifested from the base impulses of greed, fear, hate, and ignorance. Of course, they are not all completely bad, but are among the most commonly corrupted.
The Jung quote above, from the IN-SHADOW movie page, refers to the transformation that signifies all hero journeys- the descent into the "lower" realms of human experience, before merging with the light. This is a theme that occurs in many stories, including my favorite Star Wars. We have to understand the worst aspects of the world to know what we might face and how to overcome it. If we can't overcome it, we need to know how to at least be at peace with ourselves and our collective infinite nature.
If you've already read to this point & haven't watched the movie, take about 10 minutes to check it out. It is an awe-inspiring movie that is worth watching.
I've come across some wacked-out monkey stuff I'm going to post here for my own amusement.
First of all, here's a skeevy video I saw on BoingBoing of a swarm of monkeys covering a tourist with food. It unfortunately reminds me of the grossest thing I've ever seen: Rat Hoarders. >:-P
This other video I've seen around the web is just plain weird. These monkeys wear disturbing masks and serve food at this crazy-ass Japanese restaurant:
Although I have been writing on this blog for a dozen years, I've never really tried to monetize it, other than posting about designs available in my store. This is more a leisurely pastime for me, for my own enjoyment and for those who want to read The Monkey Buddha.
My career has been in graphic design, and a few months ago I was laid off after 15 years with a studio with whom I had spent my whole career. It was fairly unexpected, but I had been unknowingly been preparing myself for that moment. I actually wasn't as upset as I would've imagined. Although I felt anxiety at the set of problems ahead of me, I also felt a degree of freedom. After working every weekday 9 to 5 for all those years, it was weird not having to keep to a schedule.
Although I wanted to find a new job, a part of me wanted to see this as an opportunity to create my own vision of a business. After many years of creating custom portraits for my friends & family, I formed Fantasy Photos in May 2017 and started my first business.
Even when working in the studio, I had been doing freelance work on the side. Now I am also trying to grow my design business. I've been learning about internet marketing and building web pages to expand my expertise.
I just started a Facebook page (finally!) for my graphic design business. I specialize in all forms of print & digital media, and have a lot of experience with branding and promotions for small startups. I have also worked with the biggest companies on the planet, so I work with clients of all sizes.
If you or someone you know could use my services & skills, do not hesitate to contact me through this website or social media. Thanks!
