Last day of class yesterday. Celebrated with a pint of Guinness and a pizza with classmates, then came home and collapsed into bed, close to tears and thanking God.
Grad school’s done.
I need a vacation.
Trains and Hearts
Rail. (Flash, 6MB) A nonlinear interpretation of a C.S. Lewis poem set to footage of rail travel between DC and Baltimore.
On the Brink
Can’t blog. Slaving away on thesis. Final critique tomorrow, then I have a Flash piece in the afternoon, and a paper due Thursday. Get back to you next week. Cya.
Update, 11.30am: Fresh out of final thesis critique. Went quite well, all panelists liked it. Rachel mentioned Barthes’ “Death of the Author,” Grad Director Leslie Hammond was intrigued and took notes on the books provided, and The McCabe wants to see a deeper and more challenging critique of the community and subculture.
And now, on to my interactive piece on trains. The work never ends.
Cranial at the Davises’
A grand time was had by all at the Barukatash domicile last night, along with Brian (another Brian), Valerie, Daniel, Wayne, and more. We played Cranium, discussed esoteric theological topics, and tossed dead rubber chickens around till past midnight. Now, that, my friends, was a party.
(Yeah, Brian gave me a sneak preview of the new Dead Chicken Berry, so I’ve totally hacked the URL.)
Bloggage from Valerie.
After the All-Nighter
I spent all night in the MA Digital Lab till 9am this morning, working on a Flash piece, then came home and collapsed, and now it’s past 5pm. Where’d the day go? The whole point of working so late was so I could have the rest of today to work on more stuff, then crash over the weekend. I am definitely not up to working the hours I used to work back in my video editing days, when I could stay up on the computer for days at a stretch with almost no sleep. Now it just takes an all-nighter to knock me out completely. I’m getting old and gray. And incoherent.
Palm in the Niche
Tempering my Zire Desire comes a sobering note from Russell Beattie: Palm Reading. (Heads-up from Wyclif.)
Facing the Grill
Critique of thesis with instructor in a few minutes, then final panel critique on Monday. Panic. (Update: Individual critique went well; just a few interface suggestions from advisor. Yay!)
The Hermit’s Song
My heart is empty. All the fountains that should run
With longing are in me
Dried up. In all the countryside there is not one
That drips to find the sea.
I have no care for anything thy love can grant
Except the moment’s vain
And hardly noticed filling of the moment’s want
And to be free from pain.
Oh, thou that art unwearying, that dost neither sleep
Nor slumber, who didst take
All care for Lazarus in the careless tomb, oh keep
Watch for me till I wake.
If thou think for me what I cannot think, if thou
Desire for me what I
Cannot desire, my soul’s interior Form, though now
Deep-buried, will not die
No more than the insensible dropp’d seed which grows
Through winter ripe for birth
Because, while it forgets, the heavens remembering throws
Sweet influence still on earth,
Because the heaven, moved moth-like by thy beauty, goes
Still turning around the earth.
– from C.S. Lewis’s The Pilgrim’s Regress
Cookies and BUCs
Heads-up from Jesper:
The buggy “Remember Me” function in my comments is fixed, I hope, thanks to a javascript fix from the Waffle Dude. In the near future, I may opt to forego these “/comments/n/” rewrites altogether and stick to the less classy, but simpler, direct URL.
Heads-up from Richard:
Farewell to the Browser Upgrade Campaign. With the advent of the modern web’s more standards-friendly browsing environment, designers need no longer sully their markup with snooty web-standards “ahems.” Also in the near future, expect my own pesteng ahem to disappear.