This tambourine, which used to belong to Daddy and Aunt Sibling, is one of my favorite things to play with. Unfortunately, it doesn't work so well for peek-a-boo!
Thursday, December 30, 2004
Monday, December 27, 2004
Super Isabel!
We stopped at this natural amphitheatre on the way to Colorado. When Daddy yelled "Hello, Isabel" into it, it sounded like a hundred Daddies yelled right back! I didn't know what to think, so was very quiet. What would I do if there were a hundred Isabels? Would there be enough milkshake to go around?
Saturday, December 25, 2004
Today was a very strange day. When I woke up, Daddy put me in a new dress and brought me downstairs. Underneath the big tree with blinking lights (which, by the way, is very fun to watch) were a bunch of boxes covered with PAPER! I was so excited. Mommy even let me pull the paper off myself, but I got very upset when she took it away. I got so many new toys, and Mommy said they were from someone named "Santa." I didn't really understand, but playing with the toys was fun. I got a set of Weebles, a walker/rider, books, clothes, sippee cups, and some wooden spoons (these were my favorite).
Thursday, December 23, 2004
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
On Tuesday, Mommy and Daddy and Maura McTague and I went to Washington, DC. Apparently some important people live there or something, but we weren't interested in that. We went to some very big buildings and stared and stared at pictures on the wall and big toys in glass cases. I had a fun time watching from my kangaroo pouch or my stroller. These funny plants were everywhere, and some of the trees had lights. Mommy said it was for Christmas. What is Christmas?
Monday, December 13, 2004
Daddy's in the news!
This appeared in the Baltimore Sun last Friday. I almost didn't even realize that it was about an event to which I had actually been, because I was trying to stuff it into my mouth as quickly as possible (before Mommy could get it away from me). Imagine my surprise to see a quote from a guy I know pretty darn well!!
News : health & science
Robotic art: Is it talent or technology?
Johns Hopkins contest paints an intriguing picture
By Michael Stroh
Sun Staff
Originally published December 10, 2004
The art show in the Johns Hopkins Mattin Center was winding down. The submissions - 24 original works on paper - had been carefully laid out on the floor of the judging chamber. Now it was time to pick a winner. One judge nodded approvingly at a paint-splattered study in red and
orange a la Jackson Pollock. Another eyed three boldly drawn diamonds in red, yellow and blue. "I love the primary-color concept," he said. But, in the end, it was a wispy Japanese-style sumi-e of an orchid that captured the blue ribbon. Not bad for a bunch of robots. In this unusual marriage of art and technology, more than 50 Hopkins University student engineers built
machines capable of spraying and splattering, dripping and scribbling, sketching and dribbling on paper. The robots showed off their artistic prowess - and occasional design flaws - at a one-of-a-kind public art show Monday on the Homewood campus.
Allison Okamura, an instructor in Hopkins' mechanical engineering department, devised the project to help teach her students the fundamentals of robot design. But the effort also touched on a question that a small but growing number of professional artists and engineers are debating: Is it possible for a machine to create art?
"The robot itself may be art, or the thing that the robots create may be the art," Okamura says. "The definition of art is so open ended."
......edited out for not being about Daddy's school at all.......
This week the Johns Hopkins engineering students found out just how difficult it can be to create an artistic machine. Many of the works of art could have graced kindergarten portfolios. Which raises the question: What is art, anyway?
"The aesthetic is so much in the eye of the beholder," says James Rouvelle, an artist who teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art and served as a judge at the show.
Graduate students Kiju Lee and Wooram Park, who created the first-place robot, said it took weeks to build and program a machine capable of sketching a sumi-e style orchid. Sumi-e are deceptively simple Japanese drawings created with black ink and a brush.
Despite its popularity with the judges and crowd, Lee says she wasn't convinced that the machine (dubbed "Naan," Korean for orchid) actually created art. Especially because Naan's renderings changed little from one drawing to the next. "To create the leaf, that's not art," says Lee, 25. "The software we designed - that's the art."
But John Dickinson, a 22-year-old senior who developed two mouse-sized robots that scribble randomly on paper, said he wasn't so sure.
"There are people who take a blank canvas and put a dot on it and call it art," he says. Watching as his bots inked intricate patterns onto the paper, he continued talking. "I feel like I've walked into a gallery and seen things like this."
Repetto, the ArtBot organizer, said new technologies always push artists and scholars to rethink their definition of art. "If something touches you or compels you to think," he says, "do you really care if it's 'art' or not?"
By that definition, then you might also consider "Canada" to be a work of art. That's what Hopkins seniors Jimmy Ballew and Phil Nigon called their robot, which drew crowds eager to peek inside the machine's protective microwave-sized Plexiglas box. When Ballew pushed a button, the robot sprayed a patch of green paint onto a sheet of paper lying at the bottom of the box. A toy fire hydrant, connected to a motorized spool of string, then dropped down onto this patch of "grass." Finally, a toy dog at the end of the robotic arm trotted out and deposited a pool of yellow paint where the hydrant sat. The crowds always applauded. If this isn't art, Ballew said, what is? "Even when they're disgusted, they eventually laugh."
News : health & science
Robotic art: Is it talent or technology?
Johns Hopkins contest paints an intriguing picture
By Michael Stroh
Sun Staff
Originally published December 10, 2004
The art show in the Johns Hopkins Mattin Center was winding down. The submissions - 24 original works on paper - had been carefully laid out on the floor of the judging chamber. Now it was time to pick a winner. One judge nodded approvingly at a paint-splattered study in red and
orange a la Jackson Pollock. Another eyed three boldly drawn diamonds in red, yellow and blue. "I love the primary-color concept," he said. But, in the end, it was a wispy Japanese-style sumi-e of an orchid that captured the blue ribbon. Not bad for a bunch of robots. In this unusual marriage of art and technology, more than 50 Hopkins University student engineers built
machines capable of spraying and splattering, dripping and scribbling, sketching and dribbling on paper. The robots showed off their artistic prowess - and occasional design flaws - at a one-of-a-kind public art show Monday on the Homewood campus.
Allison Okamura, an instructor in Hopkins' mechanical engineering department, devised the project to help teach her students the fundamentals of robot design. But the effort also touched on a question that a small but growing number of professional artists and engineers are debating: Is it possible for a machine to create art?
"The robot itself may be art, or the thing that the robots create may be the art," Okamura says. "The definition of art is so open ended."
......edited out for not being about Daddy's school at all.......
This week the Johns Hopkins engineering students found out just how difficult it can be to create an artistic machine. Many of the works of art could have graced kindergarten portfolios. Which raises the question: What is art, anyway?
"The aesthetic is so much in the eye of the beholder," says James Rouvelle, an artist who teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art and served as a judge at the show.
Graduate students Kiju Lee and Wooram Park, who created the first-place robot, said it took weeks to build and program a machine capable of sketching a sumi-e style orchid. Sumi-e are deceptively simple Japanese drawings created with black ink and a brush.
Despite its popularity with the judges and crowd, Lee says she wasn't convinced that the machine (dubbed "Naan," Korean for orchid) actually created art. Especially because Naan's renderings changed little from one drawing to the next. "To create the leaf, that's not art," says Lee, 25. "The software we designed - that's the art."
But John Dickinson, a 22-year-old senior who developed two mouse-sized robots that scribble randomly on paper, said he wasn't so sure.
"There are people who take a blank canvas and put a dot on it and call it art," he says. Watching as his bots inked intricate patterns onto the paper, he continued talking. "I feel like I've walked into a gallery and seen things like this."
Repetto, the ArtBot organizer, said new technologies always push artists and scholars to rethink their definition of art. "If something touches you or compels you to think," he says, "do you really care if it's 'art' or not?"
By that definition, then you might also consider "Canada" to be a work of art. That's what Hopkins seniors Jimmy Ballew and Phil Nigon called their robot, which drew crowds eager to peek inside the machine's protective microwave-sized Plexiglas box. When Ballew pushed a button, the robot sprayed a patch of green paint onto a sheet of paper lying at the bottom of the box. A toy fire hydrant, connected to a motorized spool of string, then dropped down onto this patch of "grass." Finally, a toy dog at the end of the robotic arm trotted out and deposited a pool of yellow paint where the hydrant sat. The crowds always applauded. If this isn't art, Ballew said, what is? "Even when they're disgusted, they eventually laugh."
Saturday, December 11, 2004
Even though I still HATE anything Mommy gives me on a spoon (I purse my lips together tightly so she can't get anything in), I am still eager to put lots of things in my mouth. And I LOVE eating crackers all by myself! Sometimes I get a little bit messy, though, so I usually end up getting a bath right away.
Sunday, December 05, 2004
Saturday, December 04, 2004
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