Jay Gidwitz's Posterous

 

How to Protect your laptop in Case of theft

via http://www.openforum.com/articles/how-to-protect-your-laptop-in-case-of-theft

After taking the proper offline precautions here are the nerdy precautions:

How to prevent theft and protect data

By taking the steps above, you maximize the chances that your laptop will be returned to you, whether it was stolen or simply misplaced. But what about precautionary measures? Here are a few things you can do beforehand to help make sure your laptop finds its way home and that your data stays protected.

1. Install Prey

Prey Project introduction from Carlos Yaconi on Vimeo.

 

Prey is a monitoring application that you can activate remotely should your laptop become missing or stolen. Prey then "calls home" to the Prey server (or your own server, depending upon configuration) once the laptop connects to the Internet. A Prey report gives the IP address, geolocation (complete with map) and even a screenshot from your webcam. You can also use Prey to lock your device to prevent others from accessing it.

2. Encrypt sensitive data

Personal data such as credit card, financial and medical records should always be encrypted—this is doubly true if your computer is portable. Encrypting your data will help to ensure that your identity doesn't get stolen along with your laptop and helps protect you from any liability regarding the loss of sensitive work files.

There are a number of good encryption tools out there, and many modern operating systems have encryption options baked in. One popular, free encryption tool for Mac, Windows and Linux platforms is TrueCrypt. Cross-platform and free, TrueCrypt is an affordable way to protect your personal files.

3. Make your laptop easy to Return

Consider placing a prominently named text file on your desktop (e.g. REWARD_IF_FOUND.TXT) containing your contact information and any information about a reward, if you can afford to offer one. These details will make it easier for anyone who's stumbled across your missing computer to return it to you without the need to go digging through personal data. It may even cause a remorseful thief to have a change of heart—especially if you can provide a way for the laptop to be returned anonymously.

4. Back up your data frequently

You should already be backing up your data on a regular basis to protect against hardware or software failure, but if you're not, the possibility of a missing laptop is just one more motivator to do so. If you're on the go with your laptop a lot, you may want to take advantage of online backup services like Dropbox. If you choose to backup to an external hard drive, don't store the drive in your laptop bag! While this is fine for protecting you from technical issues, having your backup hard drive stolen along with your laptop doesn't do you any good at all.

5. Consider an engraving

If you're serious about hanging onto your laptop, consider having your company or name and a piece of contact information such as your e-mail address or phone number engraved into a prominent location on your laptop. This greatly decreases its resale value and makes it obvious who the laptop belongs to. Engraving is a reasonably good deterrent against theft and provides just one more way of letting the finder of your laptop know who to return it to. Of course the downside to this is that it makes the laptop harder for you to sell as well, unless you replace the engraved portion of the case.

 

Story of what happens when you steal a laptop from a former NASA Scientist/FBI employee and current IT Security specialist:

 

 

Anti-Flat: Paintings by Gerry Judah
(download)

Artist Gerry Judah's paintings are massively and aggressively three-dimensional, piling up, away, and out from the canvas to form linked cities, ruins, and debris-encrusted bridges, like reefs

They are perhaps what a tectonic collaboration between Lebbeus Woods and Jackson Pollock might produce: blasted and collapsing landscapes so covered in white it's as if nuclear winter has set in.

As the short film included below makes clear, Judah embeds entire architectural models in each piece, affixing small constellations of buildings to the canvas before beginning a kind of archaeological onslaught: layering paint on top of paint, raining strata down for days to seal the landscape in place and make it ready for wall-mounting.

Gerry Judah

via BLDG BLOG

via Reckon

Filed under: Painting Sculpture
 

Granoff Center in Povidence, RI

(download)

 

The new creative arts building in Providence.

Designed by architects Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio and Charles Renfro for the interdisciplinary Creative Arts Council at Brown.

 

Granoff Center press release

Filed under: Brown University Architecture Creative Arts Center Providence RI
 
The winter weather makes me want to light up a snowman with a flamethrower.
 

The Tower (Tarot Card)

The_tower-copy

 

I'm working on a Tarot deck with my good friend Anthony

This card for the tarot deck wanted to be made, first apparently, even though we'd started other cards earlier and had planned to go in some semblance of the order of the cards.

The Tower (XVI) (most common modern name) is the sixteenth trump or Major Arcana card in most cartomancy Tarot decks.

Divination usage
Some frequent keywords used by card readers are:
  • Chaos ----- Sudden change ----- Impact ----- Hard times
  • Crisis ----- Revelation ----- Disruption ----- Realizing the truth
  • Disillusion ----- Crash ----- Burst ----- Uncomfortable experience
  • Downfall ----- Ruin ----- Ego blow ----- Explosive transformation
 
 Interpretation
 Many differing meanings are attributed to the card:
  • To some, it symbolizes failure, ruin and catastrophe.
  • To others, the Tower represents the paradigms constructed by the ego, the sum total of all schema that the mind constructs to understand the universe. The Tower is struck by lightning when reality does not conform to expectation.
  • Epiphanies, transcendental states of consciousness, and Kundalini experiences[5] may result. In the Triple Goddess Tarot, the card is named "Kundalini Rising".
  • The Tower further symbolizes that moment in trance in which the mind actually changes the direction of the force of attention from alpha condition (pointed mindward) to theta condition (pointed imaginal stageward). A Theta condition (especially in waking versions of theta states) is that moment when information coming into the ego-mind overwhelms external or sensory stimuli, resulting in what might otherwise be called a "vision" or "hallucination."
  • Each card in the Major Arcana is a related to the previous ones. After the self bondage of The Devil, life is self correcting. Either the querents must make changes in their own lives, or the changes will be made for them.
  • The querent may be holding on to false ideas or pretenses; a new approach to thinking about the problem is needed. The querent is advised to think outside the box. The querent is warned that truth may not oblige schema. It may be time for the querent to re-examine belief structures, ideologies, and paradigms they hold to. The card may also point toward seeking education or higher knowledge.
  • Others believe that the Tower represents dualism, and the smashing of dualism into its component parts, in preparation for renewal that does not come from reified, entrenched concepts. The Ivory Tower as a parallel image comes to mind, with all its good parts and its bad parts.

 

Filed under: Digital Painting Jay Gidwitz Art Tarot Deck Tarot Deck Series The Tower digital art photo-manipulation photography
 

Christopher Bucklow - via reckon

Christopher Bucklow

(download)

via reckon.posterous.com

http://www.chrisbucklow.com/

 

Filed under: art photography
 

Dream Logic (by Moi -- {Jay Gidwitz Art})

(download)

From the Artist Statement:

The exhibition of Dream Logic, was my senior thesis show in 2009. It contained some of my best surrealist work up until that point, created with photography and digital painting in Photoshop. "Surrealism" denotes a type of dream like imagery in art work as well as a specific movement of which Andre Breton was leader of until his death. And then of course there was Dali, who claimed he was surrealism - which was probably true.

Realistic & impossible dream-like imagery has probably existed since humans have been creating art. Many of my teachers insisted that while my work was "surrealistic," it was not "surrealism." Dream Logic sums up this work. It is meant to indicate an attitude toward creativity and the creative process, as well as work that is "dream-like" in nature without any of the Freudian baggage that surrealism was associated with.

My aim is to capture the surreal and mysterious world of dreams and the unconscious, the images that appear as you float towards the periphery of consciousness.

Most of the art here is new media: a mixture of photography and digital painting, or digital art.

 

 

Via Dream Logic (on photoshelter -- testing out the site)

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