hello planet earth

My co-worker showed me this really neat website where this guy developed a system to visually graph the structure of websites. He uses colored dots to represent different types of links found on a website and the whole thing creates this really beautiful artwork. He's also included an applet where you can type in your own website or the website of your choosing and see how it's structured. Check it out at: www.aharef.info/2006/05/websites_as_graphs.htm

Friday night I went to what you could call an art gallery opening. It was a group of high school students involved in an afterschool program that teaches them creative writing, illustration, painting, and dance. It really wasn't about the art, but more importantly, about the students. All of them were hispanic and based on some of their poems and short stories, most of them have experienced some pretty awful stuff as far as gang violence and death. Walking around to each of their tables was really interesting because every time I did I could feel a pair of eyes watching me. A couple times the artist/student came up to me and asked me what I thought about his/her work. Much more up-front and bold than I thought they'd be. But it was very obvious that they were proud of themselves, like this was their shining moment and they were drinking in ever little detail about it. It was actually one of the more stimulating art show openings that I've been to. The art was high school level or below, so it wasn't that, but the interaction with the artists was really good.

I found out about the opening at church last sunday. One of the creative writing instructors made an announcement at the end of the service and I ended up talking to her afterwards. She's about my age and her dad is the director of the program called AuthorStrate. We got to talking about why I was so interested in the program and she found out that I'm a graphic designer. Turns out, their non-profit just received a bunch of funding to buy a bunch of mac minis and software and start up a graphic design course, and they're currently looking for someone to help teach it! So she took down my contact information, and we'll see what happens from there. She said it would be about 3 days/week after school, or around 5pm. Hopefully we can work something out so that, even if I can't teach the class, at least I can be involved in some way. I'll keep ya'll posted if I hear anything more about this.

Hope you enjoyed the novel. Don't forget to check out that website!!