Can you speak Googlish?
July 9, 2007
Remember that little bit I did on Google buying the world? Well, Google’s world just got a bit bigger….again.
This time they’re buying Postini, an enterprise anti-spam service, for $625M. Interesting New York Times article notes that this is a change in direction, but I don’t think so. If you read their blogs you’ll see that this has been their direction for some time.
Google is pretty carefully acquiring everything Microsoft offers, and then some. One of the big gaps (I thought) was mail service. GoogleMail is fine for private individuals, but nowhere near as robust and feature-rich as most corporations demand, especially when it comes to live communication/presence detection. Microsoft definitely has (or maybe had) the edge there.
In any case, be interesting to see if Microsoft does another tit-for-tat announcement of its acquisitions….
Stacks bowl update
July 7, 2007
Went down to Bullseye this afternoon to see what the heck kind of glass got into my Stacks bowl (see original blogpost):
The grey tweed effect was SUPPOSED to be pure French Vanilla, punctuated by small transparent lines of intense color. Instead, I got a motley assortment of greys and lavenders mixed with French Vanilla.
The very nice folks at Bullseye were stumped, too. This isn’t a standard glass. Most likely, they say, it’s a special production, experimental sheet that LOOKED like French Vanilla but strikes. Most likely a full fuse would go completely grey, but who knows without trying it?
Anyway, they can’t tell me more without the production labels, which of course I didn’t keep. So until I find them…or another sheet that does the same thing…this will remain a mystery.
Lesson learned. Keep the production labels until AFTER the piece is finished.
Drat.
Glass project notes
July 4, 2007
There’s a discussion going on Warmglass right now concerning beginning glass resources (books and tutorials). I’ve just suggested that your own project notes are an essential part of the journey, a sort of do-it-yourself tutorial that should never be missed.
I know that mine have helped immensely, and every time I’ve forgotten to complete them I’ve been sorry.
Anyway, I promised I would share, so here goes. Feel free to download the template that I use. I’ve evolved this one over the years, also borrowed a bit from the Bullseye project template…but this one has a bit more of the detail I need.
Here’s an example of a completed project sheet, if you want to see it. This one recorded the project I also talked about in my first frittery post.
Now, I tend to journal a lot (as you’ve seen if you read this blog), so these notes have a lot more detail than a lot of artists would typically include. I also work pretty naturally on the computer, so my notes and diagramming are all done in Word, Photoshop and Visio. Nothing says you can’t do the same thing with a pencil, though.
Anyway…you’re welcome to use the template if you find it useful.
Twinvision castings
July 3, 2007
The Twinvision twins have finished a casting and I promised to get it online for them….You’ll see more about it on the Warmglass discussion board.
Drat. Doncha hate it when that happens?
July 1, 2007
On the production side of the house, I have four series I really enjoy working on: Crystals, Sand, Shards and Stacks. I’ve talked about the first three a bit, and was getting around to Stacks when a commission piece blew up on me this morning. Damnation.
Many really talented artists (including Marty Kremer and Steve Immerman) assemble strips of glass on end and take them to a full fuse. They’ll then grind them down until they’re perfectly flat and even, for a very elegant look.
I’ve found I like keeping the rougher, strip-like appearance by using a tack-fuse to hold the components, and that’s essentially what Stacks is all about. It can be a challenge to hold that appearance. Too little heatwork and you get sharp edges (plus the piece tends to fall apart); too much, and the components go soft and gooey and start to pull in on themselves, spoiling the line.
Anyway, I figured it out with this piece, which remains one of my favorite non-sculptural pieces:
It measures about 10 inches across and maybe 4 inches high, and is laid up directly in the mold, not as a flat blank that’s later slumped. I cut the glass strips short and stagger them (much like you’d stagger strips in a hardwood floor), letting them follow the curve of the mold.
You really only need a single tack-fuse firing for this as a result. I tend to grind some edges and not others, enhancing the “wild” appearance of the color areas, and give it a second “fire-polish” session in the kiln.
Anyway, working on a deadline piece that I really wanted to work well, about 15 inches in diameter, 4 inches high and a more complicated mold than usual. Spent about 25 hours cutting and fitting strips, fired it long and slow, and opened the kiln this morning:
Ugh.
Apparently what I took for Bullseye French Vanilla..wasn’t. This piece should be creamy vanilla on either side of the color strip, with a couple of judicious lines of color inserted for contrast. Instead I’ve got this nasty purply-grey stripey stuff and it’s pretty easy to see where I ran out of the first “French Vanilla” sheet and started on the next, isn’t it?
Sigh. I’ll take the bowl over to Bullseye and see what I actually did use instead of FV–I don’t recognize it. Maybe I got it out of the “experimentals” bin and mislabeled it. In any case, it’s my own dumb fault and a good lesson to be more careful about labeling scrap.
Drat.