Back Online!

After 2 months without internet, The Colorist blog is back in action. Posts to follow!

Internet, Shminternet

How important is your ISP (internet service provider)? I am finding out as I suffer from the loss of mine. My home without internet? I feel "homeless!"

The Colorist should be back up soon, dear readers. Thanks for your visits.

Meanwhile, here is some art and a silly shopped pic of moi.

Now I'm Trying Feedly

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Bloglovin is fine, but Feedly seems to over-arch my non-blog world, too.  I'm going to try it.  Yes, it offers to vacuum up your Google Reader and it's a bit scary how it does it!  No questions asked, just a "hoover" noise and wham!  Your GR stuff is on Feedly, now.

To add to the creepy factor, I cannot give you a link because it goes straight to my iCloud.  Anyway, I will be trying it out, as I am trying out multiple new feeds.

Okay, here is the About link to Feedly.

Google Reader, I hardly knew you...

Blogger Goes Blind Sunday Night - Follow With New Tools

@@@

One idea:

Thanks!

Bye Bye, Google Reader

http://cristinaswatercolors.blogspot.com/

The soon-coming demise of Google Reader fulfills the tenants of Murphy's Law.  In particular, the one about when something is really good, it will be discontinued.

Please take the time to switch my humble blog over to your new feed service, kind reader.

I very much like Cristina Dalla Valentina's blog, and here is her suggestion to use Feedly as an alternative.  What is your idea or plan? 

So Long, Word Verif#@ation

I took down my word verification.  The only spam I get is from some guy named kevin or kevin21.  He is very dedicated to his spamming here, and he takes the time and effort to fill in my WV.  And, I dump him straight into the spam file every time.


All others, please feel free to comment here, free of the now too odious word verification process.


Poppy Brew provided this nice graphic.

Favicons for Blogger

My wife, Lorie, took some great promotional images, and we immodestly used the following inspirations for our efforts: 

this and that.

Blogger has now provided, after probably 5 years of requests, the ability for you to embed your Favicon (icon) with a simple upload to your Blogger design page.  My own struggles with keeping a Favicon on my blog may finally have been resolved by this new tool.


The icon that I used to have which was posted at an image hosting site just disappeared one day.  I suspected that it was a Windows update that caused this action, but it turned out to be the demise of the hosting site that was to blame.


My recent efforts involved embedding an icon in the code of my blog template. That was successful, except for the problem of my icon being present with IE and Firefox, but not on Chrome.  I tried to research a fix for this twice, but came up against some walls that stumped my feeble technical mind.


Now you can ignore the image hosting site, and the funny HTML embeds that most of us have no idea how to work.  Just get your image in a 16 x 16 pixel size and you're ready to apply it to your Blogger design page.  Woo Hooo.


Get the basics on Favicons:

Shoestring Branding




Some Favicon ideas:


Making a Mark
Lines and Colors
Astrid Volquardsen

Bill Hosner

Words on Words

Apple In The Rough

Apple Process

@9" x  10.5"

Pastel

Casey Klahn

Here is a fun example of some process work.  It is a process example two-fer, since the still life genre is a practical exercise, and here you see my color and parameter marks as well.  With the exception of some problems with anchoring the apple, I was happy with the outcome of this pastel work.


On a Blogger note, I am posting daily for a month since the 3rd., except that my May 11th. post is still missing.  Maybe all my paintings look alike to the Blogger engineers...


Here is what I retrieved from Facebook of Wednesday's post:


Note:  I posted a cool YouTube music video with it, and stumped my panel of commenters with a fun question about it. Unfortunately, those comments and the video don't show. 


The River In Golden Light

Waning Light

9" x 12"

Pastel

Casey Klahn

Yesterday's post: Do You Mind?  Art & the life of the mind.

The River Series.

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Longtime readers of The Colorist remember videos posted with river images. Can you guess what this next song has to do with the river?

Static Fling - A Blogger Outage

Is Blogger the sixth most popular internet sight?  That was a rumor I heard while searching the news about Blogger's over 20 hour hiccup that began yesterday and ran through today. Data corruption was the reason that Blogger reports led to its take down of all posts since Wednesday, May 11th., 2011.  At first, access was read-only, and users weren't able to log in to their blogs.  As I write this post, Blogger has returned my posts since Wednesday. Who posted corrupt code at Blogger?  Inquiring minds want to know.


Personally, I did notice some bad behavior by my blog leading up to the outage.  Blogger posted my comments, incorrectly, as CaseyBooks, and adding a video on my sidebar that belonged in the posts.  


The Colorist has been posting daily since May 3rd., and so the impact on my plans has been noticeable.  I want the posts to show an uninterrupted daily listing.  It is a goal I keep once a year, and the rest of the year I like to post once, twice or three times a week.

The Colorist is an artist's blog newsletter and forum on fine art, authored by Casey Klahn.

Or, Maybe This Draws A Picture Of My PC

BTW, My PC looks Like This

Tech Issues

I'm having tech issues here at the studio.

Let's hope they end sooner, rather than later.  I'll try to post as I find internet kibbles available.

The better news is, I do have a dozen or so new pictures to post and you'll get to see those when The Colorist gets back up.

There's Good News, and There's Bad News

Road Trip

Not about the show! That news is all good - I had a wonderful day in sunny Sausalito. The art festival had great "gate" today, and I expect the same for the next couple of days.

The good news/bad news is about the camera issues I have been having. I forgot my cable for downloading images, so today I was trying to borrow one from some neighboring artists and a 10 year-old kid overheard my dilemma, and suggested that I just stick the SD card from my camera directly into my laptop. Tonight I looked, and there is the SD port right in front. Doh. No, double-doh!! Now I have forgotten my camera at the booth! I promise pics tomorrow, since I should have the technology, and the parts, all together by then.

Organization skills are a critical issue when you are doing an outdoor fair. I do fairly well, but something will always slip through the cracks.

Glitch Marketing

Casey Klahn

I can't figure out why my stats went ballistic two days ago. It seems like an explosion of interest in just one page of my blog. I think Google has a glitch, where a redirect takes surfers to the Pollock page. I can't complain. For an early effort by The Colorist, that page lays out a lot of meat.

Not my art, though. And, not much original content. For more original art content, I suggest this page.

Anyway. Thanks for tripping into The Colorist, which is a newsletter blog about my colorist works, and essays on fine art.

System Corruption

"What Did U Say?"

The geek at the computer shop tells me that my operating system is corrupt. In the Old West, those would be fightin' words! But, in the digital era, it just means that I ought to complete a system restore. So, if I can find my (improperly filed) SR software, this will be my next move.

With August activities pressing, and Sausalito upcoming, my posts will be thin.

I leave you with the most frightening movie scene ever filmed. HAL 9000 has your back, Dave.

Blip

My Toshiba laptop is on life support. Being older than four years, the stalwart tool is losing data fast. As I never did proper back ups, I have it in the shop for a complete back-up of the C drive, and when it gets home, I will be running a HD back up as sort of, well, an iron lung (cue Ian Anderson).

I am contemplating sending the laptop back to its infant stages by wiping everything out and starting over. The only programs I have ever used, that I can think of, are the Photoshop (version 2, which I bought used from Fred Flintstone) and whatever came bundled or free, such as Open Office and Firefox. I have the media for PSE 2 and can put that back on and continue to march. Any geeks out there have input on this?

Posting will be thin for about another week, as we are busy in the framing studio and in the final countdown before my show in California.


gif credit: msbilliejoemonique.

Terrific & Terrible: Technical Tidbits

IT Guys

In reviewing this month of posting daily, one thing that looms large is the technical train that runs this blogging adventure. I have experienced both the terrific and the terrible with daily posting, and here are some of the events that have colored my month.

Technology Terrific.

One awesome thing was being street juried into the new and very high quality site, art *setter. I was asked to present an essay for their premier, and provided Artist, Know Thyself. I am noodling the idea of writing a SP book about the Artist's Traits series, and this was my opportunity to begin the final write of these essays.

Twitter. Now it seems that artist bloggers are getting the idea that Twitter can be a useful tool and is low impact on one's time if you do it right.

There has been increased readership here and at Twitter. I have met a number of new people, including many artists. New commentors have "de-lurked" to add their two cents here.

My sometimes poor citizenship around my artbog chums' blogs has been better during this month of posting. Recent sytem problems have curtailed that, unfortunately. Sorry to all of you who I usually visit more.

I discovered, by accident of course, how to biggie size the photos in my posts. That was a goal of my template switch, which has only been realized with the added power of big images. This blog is image centric, but not that busy compared to many websites. These bigger images should still load reasonably quickly, and I think they are batter at representing what I'm posting. I haven't tried them on artwork, yet, so we'll see how that goes.

Photobucket has been a peach of a tool. I can get animated gifs, and use them for free and on their server, too. My favorite is the axe smack down with the *pro* wrestlers. Also, some videos are available to post, which is where I found the street chalkers in Florence about a month ago.

Terrible Techno Gaffs.

I have discovered some chinks in the home system. My router is seeing it's final days of service. It works intermitantly and that means that I can't get on the internet when I want. The worst symptom, so far, has been the inability to get Twitter searches to work, and I often lose connectivity at Twitter altogether.

I have begun the De Kooning book club with Alyson Stanfield, et al., at Twitter. I couldn't get on the club page (which is accessed by doing a search query at Twitter) for about 3 days. No search query worked, although I did get on there once the other day. My router? My PC? The server at Twitter?

After downloading the Tweetdeck utility, and a day of fretting and cleaning up my PC, I am finally hooked up with my book club. Woo Hoo!

The Washington State Art Bloggers post has been updated to include new or omitted bloggers. Also access that information via a button on the right hand margin of this blog.

Quick Key Link Buttons

Your Portals to Reference Heaven

The popular link buttons on the right hand margin of this page are easy for you to make. They resemble computer keys, and represent quick key-stroke access to a particular subject.

Why Make Quick Key Links?

The genesis of these little label-linkers was the incredible traffic that I was getting for the search query: "Jackson Pollock". I was amused and bewildered at first, because I had done some light-hearted and entertaining posts about the great Abstract Expressionist, but I didn't consider any of it to be really meaty content. Nothing new or scholarly, in other words.

I realized that the numerous visits that I was getting here at The Colorist seeking Jackson Pollock were coming in from students doing research. Of course, my Google rank has something to do with the search engines coming here, but I felt a certain obligation to make sure that these art history students had real content to find. I wanted to provide a comprehensive jump-off point that would point my kind readers to the Pollock meat - the best internet resources quickly found.

My Quick Key Link Buttons, which now include Washington State Art Bloggers, Leonardo da Vinci, and Jackson Pollock, also needed to fit my own criteria for good link etiquette. I want first to have my link seeker find most of his links on the first click. I am not opposed to taking my reader on a tour of blog posts at The Colorist, where he will find all posts labeled "Da Vinci" for instance, but I really dislike being required to hit the Enter button twice to produce a result. Clear, quick, thorough and concise is the goal. If for one reason or another you can't get your visitors to your subjects in one click, then create a bridge post called "Jackson Pollock Researcher," or the like, and have it provide the link to all of your labels to that subject.

How To Make Them

Do you have a traffic-nexus subject that you notice gets numerous hits on your blog? All of your chilled cucumber recipes? A lot of posts labeled "Space Sprockets"? Review your blog labels about this subject. You may need to go back and add labels to posts that you have in mind, if you've been remiss about good labeling.

Hint: create one post with the label of the link button, such as "Jackson Pollock Researcher," and then have that be the only post you label as such. In that post, offer your readers to select your standard label about the topic: "Jackson Pollock."

Select an image to use as your button, and size it properly in a Photo editor like Photoshop. My quick links are 83 pixels by 51 pixels. Making them uniform keeps your blog tidy, and gives the system a clear vision. I also have created my "buttons" as faux computer keys, to give the idea of a quick stroke on your keyboard. BTW, the image on the Pollock link is his painting titled "The Key." This took some tricky Photo shopping, but it isn't rocket science, either. All you need, though, is an iconic image that signifies your topic.

Open another window with the blog page you want for your button. Cut or copy the URL (to your clipboard).

Now, on your original blog page, open your layout page (Blogger), select Add A Page Element, and select Picture. I browse for the 83x51 jpeg that I have stored on my desktop and select it, and then in the URL link box, I paste the address of my blog page which you have placed on your clipboard.

Save and review. You should have your spiffy picture that links to a post, or set of pages with a label, on your blog. MAC users, talk among yourselves. I'm sorry that I have no idea how to translate any of this outside of PC methods.

Another solution is to send your reader to a Squidoo Lens or unique web page that you have designed. I am working on my own Squidoo Lens, now. The thing about these lenses is that you want to have something very original, and with a certain amount of authority, if you want it to be worthwhile. Using a post and label target, however, translates into multiplied visits to your blog. And, quality content and systems keeps your readers coming back.

Technorati & Art Fair

It has been fun watching a goal come together and bear fruit. I set my goal about 3 or 4 months ago to increase my Technorati "Authority". I guess I didn't enjoy watching it take a little dip, and wondered how to add to the pesky little number. As a byproduct, the authority at Pastel has risen, too.

For my humble blog, a "45" is gratifying. If for no other reasons than just to see that there is some readership, and also just to see a plan come together. I get some fun out of reading other bloggers' authorities, as I find new blogs that way.

Now, anyone know where to find that spiffy widget that tells one's Technorati authority on it? I have tried their widget inventory and I cannot find it.

Today I visited all of my cronies at the Spokane ArtFest, which I am not participating in this year. For a news report on the fair, and art fairs in general, visit my blog, The Endless Summer Art Fair, soon. I will cross post half of the report here, as well, with pictures of some of your favorite artists in their booths.

Blogging Under Threat

Forest Study
6" x 5"
Charcoal
Casey Klahn

Shhhhh! Don't tell Blogger that I'm broadcasting on this net. They think I'm
m alwar e.

Being l ock ed owt for three days was not much fun. Whenever there's any type of tech issue with my PC, I usually feel forced to attend to it right now, so that when I need my service, I have it. So much for being in the studio in the mornings last weekend.

Sorry to breath negatives today, since my kind readers here at The Colori st are used to me being upbeat (which I am 99.9% of the time). This may be a word to the wise that Blog grr is blank et blo kking owt a whole swath of blogs that appear to contain m'licious s oft ware or auto mat ed thingies that b o t around the net from blogs. Something to do with s p a (m) I guess.

When I was in the Army, it was against military law to treat the group as holding the guilt of the one. If one guy screwed up, all couldn't be punished. Of course, this is a fine regulation for civilians, but the an army must run as a group. Teams are teams. So, we ignored the stupid reg. But, is there anything more independent than a Blog ger? The treatment of a swath of individuals in this manner is appalling. Remember fascism? Obviously the young ge eks at Blog grr skipped their world history classes...

OK. That feels a little better. Your faithful artist will continue here. I'll be making a back up of The Colorist and associated blogs, just in case I need to go packing from the Sovie t of Blogs ville.