I went to an art opening of work by David Trulli tonight at the Earl McGrath Gallery in West Hollywood. It’s a great show.
There has been a lot written about David lately, and it’s not hard to figure out why. His work is compelling and a little disturbing. They are rich in film-noir narrative, a very strong sense of place, and often come from an unexpected viewpoint. There is a fascination with the infrastructure of alienation (or is that the alienation of infrastructure?) Most, if not all, of the works feature people surrounded by the city; people caught in the middle of their own stories, yet pulled from the leading roles and made into extras by the buildings, overpasses, streetlights, microwave antennas, radar dishes, automobiles, and chain link fences.
The show is on through the end of February. Definitely stop by if you’re in the area!

Oliver Sacks, Vintage, 2004.

These are less a memoir than the story of a boy’s recapitulation of the discoveries of pre-Quantum chemistry. Sacks tells the story of his love affair with chemistry, as fostered by his Uncles (including the eponymously apellated Uncle Tungsten). His enthusiasm is contagious, and his highs of discovery made me want to rush out and buy a chemistry kit … although, as he points out, today’s chemistry sets are sadly hamstrung by the removal of anything that could be dangerous — which is to say, anything interesting. His interweaving of stories of stinkbombs and metallic sodium explosions with the history of how these same chemical processes became understood makes the history accessible — not to mention more impressive.
It made me think about the knowledge that is today taken for granted (e.g., the air we breathe is a mixture of gases, and different kinds of “air” can be emitted from various chemical reactions), and the profundity of these discoveries.
Perhaps I learned less about the chemical properties of various elements than I could have from this book, but I certainly did take away a sense of the history of chemistry, a sense of the magic, and a sense of the enormously exciting environment of discovery that took place through the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Even though I’ve been working on it for about six months, I’m still in that excited, “hey this is great!” stage with my new teapot series. Usually, by this time, my enthusiasm has run out, and I’ve fallen into the depths of blackest despair over the general unworthiness of the project in question.

This series is based upon the shape of human heads. The inspiration has its genesis in teapots I did years ago, but got rekindled with Joey, and then later Sylph from last year.

The current series is less about pure representation, however. The first in the series, Identity Politics is online (although I’m not happy with the photography. I’ll probably reshoot this.) Recently out of the kiln, but not yet photographed, is Gabba Gabba Hey, which is a commentary on cell-phone culture, and Time of Your Life which is a simple summary of a life. Most recently, Hope has been bisqued, and Paranoia / Homeland Security is ready for the bisque. These two both involve modified or sectioned head forms, and I’m really pleased with both of them thus far. Last night I started work on War Widow, which will return slightly towards the more representational.

Pictures will be posted as they get completed.

Interesting, interesting. Maybe it is, in fact, a hardware problem after all.

I installed the Palm software on a Windows 2000 machine at work, tried syncing using the same cable, and it fails in the very same way.

Next test:

Try with a different sync cable (once I figure out the appropriate place to order one).

Background data:
After a brief pissing match with Verizon over my slowly failing Kyocera 6035 SmartPhone, I decided to exercise my capitalist prerogative, and ended our 3+ year relationship.

Now I’m a Sprint user, equipped with a Treo 650, which is a great toy. The Treo’s clearly “one-oh” software; I have to (get to?) do a reboot once or twice a day, and there are a few obvious pointer bugs that need to be squashed (e.g., try searching for the second word in a multiple-word contact name), but I can see that with a few ROM updates, it’s gonna be an outstanding device. And hey, if I didn’t wanna live on the bleeding edge, I wouldn’t be in a room surrounded by computers at this moment.

So here’s the puzzle:

The Treo performed a perfect sync over USB the first 3 times I tried it (I’m syncing to a Powerbook G4, running Mac OS 10.3.x, and using Palm Desktop 4.2.1 Mac). Then, after the third sync, I started consistently being unable to connect to the desktop (dreaded “The Connection between your handheld computer and the desktop could not be established. Please check your setup and try again” error ).

I have tried the following to no avail:

• Reinstall all Palm software on the Mac, then attempt sync.
• Manually hunt down and remove all Palm software (excluding my User data). Reinstall all Palm software on the Mac, then attempt sync.
• Manually hunt down and remove all Palm software (excluding my User data). Reinstall all Palm software when logged into the Mac as root, then attempt sync.
• soft reset Treo, then attempt sync.
• hard reset Treo, then attempt sync.
• start Mac with Treo plugged in, Transport Manager enabled, Hotsync Manager not started before attempting sync.
• start Mac with Treo plugged in, Transport Manager enabled, Hotsync Manager started before attempting sync.
• start Mac with Treo plugged in, Transport Manager disabled, manually enable Transport Manager before attempting sync.
• start Mac with Treo unplugged but Transport Manager enabled. . Plug in Treo, but Hotsync Manager not started before attempting sync.
• start Mac with Treo unplugged but Transport Manager enabled. . Start Hotsync Manager, and plug in Treo before attempting sync.
• start Mac with Treo unplugged, Transport Manager disabled, and Hotsync Manager inactive. Start Hotsync Manager, enable Transport Manager, and then plug in Treo before attempting sync.
• With Mac running, unplug and re-plug Treo with Transport Manager enabled, then attempt sync.
• With Mac running, unplug and re-plug Treo with Transport Manager disabled, enable Transport Manager, then attempt sync.
• start Mac with Treo plugged into powered USB hub plugged into Mac, Transport Manager enabled, and Hotsync Manager started before attempting sync.
• repeated all of the above tests in the other USB port.

Other Diagnostics I have tried:

• the Treo does not show up as a USB device under System Profile.
• USB-Probe, from Apple Developer’s kit, doesn’t see the Treo when it’s plugged in, unplugged/replugged, etc. Not that I really have any detailed idea of how USB-Probe works.
• The hotsync cable is confirmed good (contacts tested point to point with a voltmeter)
• The USB ports work for other USB devices.

Successes I have had:

• I can sync via bluetooth, but only directly to the Treo, not to the SD card

Tomorrow, I will try installing Palm Desktop on a Windows machine at work, and see if I can sync (using the same cable, of course).

Most mysterious….