The art within the craft

What makes something art?

Anyone who has ever been around artists, or is an artist has had this discussion at least once. What is the difference been an artist and a craftsman? This conversation has a tendency to become very pedantic, and often times makes the one arguing for art come across as a pompous, self-important dill hole.

So how do we define the difference between an artist and a craftsman?  What is it that separates art and craft?

As a photographer, web designer, and code monkey, I find this subject very interesting. Art is a badge that has been affixed to a great many things, and it is the single most subjective idea that can be loosed upon the world. This subjectivity is one of the things that fascinates me about the idea of art and craft being different – and yes, to get to the meat of it; there is a difference. According to Webster’s it’s as simple as this:

Craftsman: a worker who practices a trade or handicraft.

Artist: one who professes and practices an imaginative art.

So is it really this simple? What defines an imaginative art? Painting, drawing, sculpture; these are very easy to look upon and see an imaginative art.

What about photography? Surely there are examples of abstract photography that can lead to this simplified definition, but what of landscape photographers such as Bradford Washburn, Carleton Watkins, William Henry Jackson, Ansel Adams (or portrait photographers like Chuck Close, Annie Leibovitz, or Yousuf Karsh)? They shot what they saw and printed it. Granted, that is a huge over-simplification of their process (and in no way meant to be demeaning towards their art), but where is the imagination in shooting landscape? Their images reflected their personality and unique vision, and that’s what makes them standout. Their artistic vision fused with a mastery of their craft, producing exceptional images that stand as iconic examples of artistic photography. But is their work art, as Defined by Webster’s? I believe it is. All of the before mention photographers were pioneers in photography, and made huge strides in bringing the art of photography to the status it currently enjoys. Adams created stunningly beautiful and emotionally stirring images through an intimate knowledge of his chosen landscape, in particular Yosemite. His attention to detail in all aspects of image creation culminated in the perfection of a process (the Zone System) transcending craft in ways that most photographers could barely imagine.

Part of the challenge in separating art and craft also stems from that many artists are skilled craftsman; having mastered their craft and surpassed simply being able to wield their tools. Still, this is an ephemeral idea, not really lending itself to a clean delineation. That being said, does everyone who practices an art form such as painting, drawing, sculpture or print-making instantly become an artist? What it boils down to is what is being created within the given craft to push the boundaries of what has been created and how. Does the work transcend the tools used to create it or is it a reflection of the tools and subject matter?

On a personal level, I have a degree in Photography, have used dozens of different cameras and film sizes to create images. I have shot portraits and landscapes for personal and monetary reward, but do I consider myself an Artist? Probably not.

Apple’s Magic Trackpad: Not Magic, just good

I’ve been living with this thing on my desk for a couple of weeks now, and I think I like it. I bought the Apple Magic Trackpad because I like how the interaction on all my ‘i’ devices works. I love my iPad and use it all the time at home and at work, so I figured I would give the Magic Trackpad a shot.

The first thing I discovered is that I had to download an update to get it to work right. Not a big deal, and had I not tore through the wrapper like a kid opening his first Christmas gift, I would have seen the handy little sticker telling me this, but where’s the fun in that. After that it was smooth sailing.

My impression is that’s a useful alternative to using the mouse, and the long list of gestures makes it very useful, but it takes some tweaking and getting used to. I had to crank up the acceleration and tracking speed because I kept running out of surface, and keeping the device depressed while dragging is a little cumbersome. You can get around that by setting it to tap rather than click, but it seems like the tap is just a little too sensitive, and I end up selecting and dragging things I don’t really want to. After just a couple of days of almost exclusive use, I was pretty used to it.

It works well in the applications I regularly use; save two. It really doesn’t suit my working style in art programs like Photoshop and Illustrator. In fact the only Adobe application I use it with is Dreamweaver, and then only if I don’t have any of the other apps already open. It just isn’t conducive to the fine, accurate movements needed while working in Photoshop. The other (big duh here) is gaming. Yeah, no real reason to even go into it here, it’s just not designed for gaming.

Overall, it’s a solid addition to my desktop, and I would like to get the Magic Trackpad working with Windows XP on my box at work (although you will need Bluetooth on your PC to do it). For a lot of the day-to-day crap I have to do it would be great. I know I could use my Wacom Tablet for that, but that thing is huge, and thick, and doesn’t do gestures. Plus with one of these attached to my computer there, it would effectively keep people off it because they wouldn’t know how to use it. I bet Apple never thought of it as a security device.

So if you have about $70 bucks burning a hole in your pocket, I would get an Apple Magic Trackpad and let your fingers have some fun while sitting in from of your Mac.

Merge multiple columns into a new column in Excel

I was asked today to help out a colleague with merging 3 columns in an Excel spreadsheet into a single column for better formatting into a mailing address. Seems simple enough, right? So I thought.

So I headed downstairs engulfed fully in the assumption that this would take just a couple of minutes, and that I would be able to easily accomplish this with a simple function. After about 30 minutes of messing around, thumbing through Google results, and trying like hell to get a VB Macro to work, another colleague schooled in the wizardry of Excel gives me the solution in about 2 minutes flat. F00ker.

I was on the right path using concatenation and a function to combine columns A through C into column D. The function is this: =CONCATENATE(A1,” “,B1,” “,C1). This is easy to do with the built-in function builder, but could also be written like: =(TRIM(A1&” “&B1&” “&C1)). Trim isn’t necessary, but it’s nice to have if you have an empty cell in the column or extra spaces. The part that made it really easy is the expanding box around the selected cell. There’s a little box in the lower right corner of the bounding box. Double clicking it will apply that formula to the entire column. VIOLA! Naturally you could drag the selection too, but since we wanted the entire column it worked out perfect.

Check out the image sequences below for the two ways I outlined above to merge these columns together. The best part? No Macros, no VB script editing required.

Using the function builder:

Using the shortened function:

Return from the 3rd level of malware hell

There are days, that the interwebs suck dynamically placed, interactive Donkey Balls. Yesterday, was one of those days.

Come to find out at some point on Friday, Flogging English was, for lack of a better word, hacked. Two JavaScript files had some malicious code embedded in them that tried to do something well…. malicious. What? Dunno man, I just deleted that shit.

Google alerted me late in the day on Friday, meaning I didn’t see it until I checked my email a mere 30 minuted before my scheduled 50 mile ride. I fumbled about a bit, did several full searches of my blog database and found nothing. Then I started scanning the code of the pages that Google was reporting as infected. Still nothing. I made a few changes, thinking maybe it was in error – and requested a review, then went for my ride.

Well, it wasn’t an error, and Google showed me a couple more pages, one of which led me directly to my swfobject files that had been injected with the poopy code. So off I went to download the latest version of swfobject, and to rewrite all of my static Flash pages to use the new code file. Whew. With that done, I went back in a started looking at my admin setting for the blog. I had been allowing everyone who wanted to register to do so, and come to find out, I’m guessing through a hole in WordPress, someone was able to make themselves an admin. Well, not for long, and now I’ve locked it down, and only a handful of users remain. If you were one of the folks I deleted, my apologies, please let me know and I would be more than happy to sign you up again, although you do not need to be a registered user to sign up for updates if that’s all you really want.

The final mistake I made was allowing the blog directory to be written to. This is a total n00b mistake, and I’m not sure when I did this or why – so in some respects I deserve what I got, and I’m lucky it was pretty simple to fix.

All in all, I’m pretty lucky it was as easy as it was to get fixed, authenticated by Google, and the malicious code warning removed. This system seems to work pretty well, and pretty quickly since all of this went down on Friday, and not weeks before. On the plus side, now I have new clean files, a more organized directory structure, updated code files for all of my javascript frameworks, and a better understanding of how to fix these things when they happen.

REWORK : Essential reading for… everyone.

Rework is one of those books; you know the ones. The kind of book that opens your mind to ideas. Changes your attitude, and brings you a clarity of thought that you have not had in a while. Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (you know, the guys who started 37signals?) knocked this one out of the park and right into the cheap seats. If you run your own business, are thinking of starting one, trying to find the motivation to start a side project or even just slugging along in your daily life as a corporate drone – read this book.

I flew through the 279 pages in just about 2 days; I simply didn’t want to put it down. Jason and David have an amazingly readable, and accessible style which they infused into Rework making it informative, entertaining and enlightening. It’s an excellent balance of “what you’re doing is wrong”, and “here’s how to try and get on the right path.” Many books, too many in fact, end up being a manifesto of wrong, and offer little in the way of fresh ideas to try and right the ship. It’s easy to walk the halls of the great corporate sloth and point out the failures, flaws and ridiculous idiosyncrasies of doing business the slow, methodical and often times backwards way that the corporate machine operates.

Rework is listed as a business and economics book, and that’s where you’ll find it at just about any book store, but that seems to be too much of a pigeon hole for the ideas filling the pages. Just about everyone can benefit from the reading this book and reworking aspects of daily life. It’s easy to get bogged down with all of the things you have to do, and still find time to do the things you want to do. It doesn’t matter if you are into photography, painting, writing, lamp working or building custom bicycle frames, a fresh approach to any project, hobby or passion can yield unexpected and desired results.

The bottom line is; read this book.