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The Man Behind The Curtain: Bio — About Mike Kupietz

It is I! About Mike Kupietz

A year of this site, my baby, my pride and joy, ranking on page 11 of Google search results for my own name has convinced me it's time to do a little search engine optimization, so here's some brief biographical information about artist and technologist Michael Kupietz to tip off the brilliant algorithms out there as to who and what this site just might be about (including awkward third-person references to please Google's SEO.)

Mike Kupietz is an avid musician, artist, and by day a software engineer, much of which is linked to on my Other Sites section at bottom.

Mike Kupietz: Origins, range, and distinguishing characteristics

I'm an east coast expatriate who somehow, incomprehensibly, has been based for half my life now in San Francisco.

I grew up on Long Island, and attended Very Big State U upstate for two…

By Mike Kupietz First published July 7, 2024News & Info| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9103 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Music & Sound » Videos

Music & Sounds VideoBluesAcousticky GuitarLive Performance

Got To Pay Your Dues: Bedroom Full O’ Blooze – (mostly) acoustic blues videos

This is a playlist from my GuitaristInProgress Youtube channel, just a bunch of old blues tunes I ran through at various points. These are some select ones I like, but if you click that link to go to the channel, there are plenty more.

The below is displayed with some new scripts I'm working on, please forgive me if it's a little buggy. Click on a video from the list at right to load it up.

By Mike Kupietz First published June 15, 2024Music & Sounds| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=10302 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Music & Sound » Videos

Music & Sounds RockFolk & BluesAcousticky GuitarLive Performance

If I Do Play So Myself: The Best of GuitaristInProgress — video playlist

These are probably my favorites of the various video performances I posted on the GuitaristInProgress Youtube channel over the years I was active there. There's both kinds of music here — classic rock AND blues! Plus, a few hints of electric guitar and one odd psychedelic spin on my old Wurlitzer organ. If you're only going to watch one of my videos, make it one of these.

If you click that link to go to the channel, there are plenty more, but these are probably the best ones.

The below is displayed with some new scripts I'm working on, please forgive me if it's a little buggy. Click on a video thumbnail from the list to load it up.

And, as always: apologies in advance for my vocals.

By Mike Kupietz First published June 15, 2024Music & Sounds| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=10328 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Writing » Topical Writing » Reviews & Criticism

Writing Music Reviews

You Are Hear: Music Reviews

As of this writing (March 2024) this is pretty sparse, I only just had the idea. Generally I've never written much about music—I don't need to, because music is just one of those things I retain like a steel trap; it's all carved in stone upstairs, so I don't have to spend time putting it down on paper.

But, I was thinking, I do like a lot of obscure and unjustly overlooked albums, as well as having some unpopular (and therefore inescapably superior) opinions on popular music, so I thought it would be fun to make a list. This will certainly grow over time.

By Mike Kupietz First published March 16, 2024Writing| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=8650 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Visual Art » Adventure Photojournals

Photojournal Travel & AdventureExplosionsUrban Exploration

When They Pry It from My Hip, Ironic Fingers: Exploration & Explosions, a Nevada Desert Hipster Road Trip

NOTE: Some of the activities documented in this photo album, like a lot of what goes on in the Black Rock Desert during the off season (when seven different government agencies aren't there standing by to protect you from yourself), fall firmly in the "Don't try this at home" area. Or even in the "Don't do this at all" area. Seriously. Don't do any of what you see here. You will get yourself killed. We had preparations and precautions which are not described here. And one of us almost got killed anyway.

Back in Spring 2003 I got wind that a bunch of folks I'd met through some fin de siècle attempts to revive the soggy corpse of the SF Cacophony Society were heading out for a road trip through northern Nevada, to do some exploration in the abandoned American Flats silver refinery in the hills outside…

By Mike Kupietz First published February 28, 2024Photojournal| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=8209 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Visual Art » Adventure Photojournals

Photojournal Travel & AdventureCulture Jamming

Vacation Photos: Pseudonymous adventures in Europe pretending to be the Billboard Liberation Front

For a little while I used to run the Billboard Liberation Front's website (INB4: no, don't even bother asking. I have no idea how to reach them anymore. The Old Man is long since retired, and I stopped talking to everyone else I knew through the BLF maybe 15 or 20 years ago. Maybe try contacting them through their site.)

Anyhow, funny story, for maybe 5 or 6 years after I stopped associating with them, I still was getting cc'ed on their website's comment form submissions, which nobody paid any attention to anymore. In late 2007, a request came through from an arts organization in Belgium, asking if the BLF would come give a lecture at a "Culture Jamming" arts festival called "The Game Is Up", thrown annually at the historic Vooruit Art Center in Ghent, that year's theme being "Art For Sale", a…

By Mike Kupietz First published February 27, 2024Photojournal| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=7903 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Visual Art » Generative Illustrations

Image Gallery AI Generative IllustrationIlluminated Lyrics

Pings On The Wig: Raving And Drooling: (An Accidental Review and) Lyrical Illumination of Pink Floyd’s “Sheep”

☞ Skip intro

Introduction:

Pink Floyd's album "Animals", for me, might stand alone as the most singular achievement of the rock 'n' roll era. I've always argued that Pink Floyd were not a rock band, but the first act of what several decades later eventually came to be called "post-rock"—musicians grounded in the language and conventions of rock but doing their own thing with it—and never did they push the boundaries of rock music further from its beginnings, while still staying true to its basic visceral nature (this is, after all, a genre of music named after a slang term for fucking) than on "Animals".

Culminating their epic series of classic 1970s albums, each of which further developed the musical experiments of the last, "Animals" was about as far as they, or anyone, would ever take it without completely untethering from…

By Mike Kupietz First published February 10, 2024Image Gallery| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=7501 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

private » Programming Hacks Used In This Site

Code & Algorithms Web DevelopmentWordpress CodingPerformance & OptimizationPHP

Optimization-A-Go-Go: WordPress Shortcode & Function Performance Optimization with Transients

I suffer from that paradoxical form of laziness peculiar to computer geeks where I will save myself save myself 15 minutes of work on something by spending 4 hours creating a shortcut. As such, the menus on this site are dynamically generated by traversing the category tree in PHP and laying out menus and submenus from categories and subcategories, sparing me the trouble of updating them manually as I add new content. This took some effort.

I created a shortcode that does this (well, modified a shortcode, originally from the Hierarchical HTML Sitemap plugin, by Alexandra Vovk & WP Puzzle) and soon my site was happily generating dynamic menus on the fly and keeping up with my work as I added pages, edited titles, and rearranged categories.

And, along the way, getting slower.

And slower. And slower.

Finally the other night, due to a confluence of circumstance,…

By Mike Kupietz First published February 4, 2024Code & Algorithms| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=7428 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Visual Art » Generative Illustrations

Image Gallery AI Generative Illustration

Welcome To My Nightmare: Dream Jobs (the surreal preoccupations of an out-of-work IT consultant)

Another AI generative art project. I recently was experimenting with creating some work-themed images. I didn't come up with anything I could use on my FileMaker consulting website, but I did wind up generating a couple of interesting galleries. Here's three of them:

I. Energy Work: Some people really get into their work
II. Your Dream Job: Where do you see yourself in five years?
III. Model Employees: Surrealist stock photography, basically

I. Energy Work

Some people really get into their work

II. Your Dream Job

Where do you see yourself in five years?

III. Model Employees

Surrealist stock photography, basically

By Mike Kupietz First published January 20, 2024Image Gallery| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=7279 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Visual Art » Adventure Photojournals

Photojournal Travel & AdventureUrban Exploration

Beneath Berkeley: UC Berkeley Steam Tunnels Photojournal—Urban Exploration

Back around 2005-2006, as social media took off, I was a member of an urban exploration chat group, memory fails but it was probably something on Tribe or Friendster. Mentioning my interest in the UC Berkeley Steam Tunnels—a fabled network of sometimes-dangerous underground utility tunnels cross-crossing the UC Berkeley campus, which had once been well-traveled by intrepid explorers but had since been sealed off, with all access supposedly welded shut, although as of this writing I can find no evidence online of this other than an absence of any reported explorations after about 2001, and one or two scattered online claims of later access (which happen to jibe with the experience I'm about to relate)—I was contacted by privately by an old-school liberty-spiked homeless punk kid named Spider, who said he knew a way in.

After a preliminary meeting to…

By Mike Kupietz First published January 15, 2024Photojournal| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=7083 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Writing » Topical Writing » Mikesplaining (Answers to Infrequently Asked Questions)

Writing MikesplainingWork

Infrequently Asked Questions: What’s the best day of the week to take off if you work a four day, 10-hours-a-day work week?

What’s the best day of the week to take off if you work a four day, 10-hours-a-day work week? -Jeannie F, Marin County, CA

Thursday. Trust me, being self-employed I’ve done a lot of experimenting.

The ideal 3-day workweek is easy: that’s MWTh — Monday, Wednesday, Thursday. It makes Monday easier, because you know you have the next day off. You arrive Wednesday feeling like it’s Monday, except tomorrow is Thursday, which is Friday for you! Then, every week, you get a three day weekend to cap it off! It’s ideal, and I recommend the MWTh work schedule for everybody.

Working a 4-day workweek, especially 4 10-hour days, is more complicated. The entire dynamic changes. The ideal 4-day workweek is MTWF. The best day to take off is Thursday.

You have to think in terms of psychology: three 10 hour workdays in a row is easy to handle, it just…

By Mike Kupietz First published January 7, 2024Writing| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=7041 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Writing » Topical Writing » Mikesplaining (Answers to Infrequently Asked Questions)

Writing Comedy & SocietyMikesplaining

Infrequently Asked Questions: Why do people respect George Carlin?

I have a serious question, and, dead serious, I’m not deliberately trying to provoke.  Why do people respect George Carlin? -Brett F., Alberta

Carlin was the observational comic who set the mold for so many of today’s comics. Like this: “Honesty may be the best policy, but it’s important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy. ” or “In America, anyone can become president. That’s the problem.” Not the absolutely most brilliant observations ever, nor the funniest. But enough of each for people to really appreciate it. His funny cynical twist was pretty ingenious at times.

“Don Ho can sign autographs 3.4 times faster than Efrem Zimbalist Jr.” In a post-Seinfeld world, this kind of off-kilter observation, which you have to think about for a second to get, doesn’t seem as hilarious as it did when nobody had heard anything like it before. And he summed…

By Mike Kupietz First published January 7, 2024Writing| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=7038 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Writing » Topical Writing » Mikesplaining (Answers to Infrequently Asked Questions)

Writing MikesplainingMusic Theory

Infrequently Asked Questions: Why are musical notes an octave apart considered to be the same note?

Q. Why are musical notes an octave apart considered to be the same note? -Charlotte V., Seattle, WA

Notes an octave apart are the same note because of the mechanics of vibration. Consider a piano string that is hit by a hammer and vibrates 1000 vibrations per second. So in 1/1000th of a second, it does this: Starts at center, then is hit by hammer. Snaps upwards. Hits the upper limit of its vibration, when the tension pulls it back towards the center. Crosses the center but keeps moving because of the momentum. Hits the downward limit of its vibration. Snaps back towards the center. Crosses the center on its way upward again, completing one cycle.

The precise timing of this motion is:
0 Seconds - position center - hit by hammer
1/4000 of a second: hits upper limit of motion
2/4000 of a second: crosses center…

By Mike Kupietz First published January 7, 2024Writing| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=7024 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Writing » Topical Writing » Mikesplaining (Answers to Infrequently Asked Questions)

Do the odds of winning the lottery change if more people play? Is flipping tails more likely after four heads in a row?

Writing MikesplainingProbability & Statistics

Infrequently Asked Questions: Do the odds of winning the lottery change if more people play? Is flipping tails more likely after four heads in a row?

A.) Do the odds of winning the lottery change if more people play?

B.) What if 5 people each flipped a coin. If the first four all land on heads, the odds of the fifth coming up heads also is much lower, isn't it?

Answers:

A.) Do the odds of winning the lottery change if more people play?

OK. For starters, let's call the lottery what it is: it's a gamble.

For purposes of illustration, we'll consider another gamble: a coin toss.

Before we look at the question of more people betting changing the odds of winning, think about this: if you flip a coin a certain number of times, there's only a certain number of possible outcomes. For instance, if you have three flips, they can come out 8 different ways:

1.) Heads, Heads, Heads
2.) Heads, Heads, Tails
3.) Heads,…

By Mike Kupietz First published January 7, 2024Writing| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=7013 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Writing » Anecdotal Evidence (True Stories) » Local Color: True Stories From Near And Far

Writing Anecdotal EvidenceTravel & Adventure

Local Color—Ghent, Belgium: How to Find Your Hotel If You’re Lost In Ghent

Back in my salad days I once tricked the Belgian government into paying to fly me & two friends to give an arts lecture in Ghent under assumed names (long story, now recounted elsewhere on this site).

The Kunstencentrum Vooruit (Vooruit Arts Center), where we delivered our address, was an elegant old 1910 festival hall in Ghent, with galleries and lecture halls above and a bar in the basement, and which had once been used by the Nazis during the occupation.

The folks from Vooruit put us up in a 300-year-old hotel where hotel owners' incredibly classy cafe on the first floor kept us both caffeinated and entertained, with live a cappella opera singers, and the hotel part was reached by going through a door in the back of a closet.

Just a block or two from the hotel was a row of several…

By Mike Kupietz First published January 1, 2024Writing| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=6867 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Visual Art » "Petit Art": Odds & Ends

Image Gallery Fun With Scanners

Digital Objets D’Art: Robyn Hitchcock fan club 50th Birthday Card

Robyn Hitchcock used to have an email fan club that I was pretty active in (hence his name coming up a bunch of places on this site; if you're familiar with his songs, it makes sense that he gives people ideas for art.)

Back in, geez, 2003 or 4, I think, he turned 50 so we got together and all contributed a bunch of art to give to him on a CD-rom. This was my contribution, about 12 pages of scanner art (including the somewhat difficult task of getting a good digital scan of a lit candle!) Use the skull, suitcase, and bottle of wine on the right to navigate through the panels.

(Note: at narrower window widths, the navigation icons on the right side of each page below might get cut off and you will need to either widen your browser window, or scroll to the right to see…

By Mike Kupietz First published December 31, 2023Image Gallery| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=6832 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Visual Art » Adventure Photojournals

Photojournal Travel & AdventureTravelogue

Good Day at Black Rock: 27 Photos from Burning Man 1997

Introduction, 2023:

Back when I first got to San Francisco in the mid-90s, full of youthful idealism, the first thing I did was seek out the San Francisco Cacophony Society and their best-known offspring, the Burning Man festival and the nascent subculture that surrounded it. Well, no, the first thing I did was spend 3 years of my late 20s cocooned at the Green Tortoise Adventure Travel office & youth hostel, where I lived and worked, venturing out only to cavort in the surrounding North Beach neighborhood with the poets and the blues musicians. But after three years of that—straight out to explore what San Francisco's modern counterculture had to offer, without delay.

But well prior to that, in September 1997, a bunch of us Tortoise employees borrowed a bus from them—great perk of working for an adventure tour bus operator—and went out for a long…

By Mike Kupietz First published December 31, 2023Photojournal| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=6797 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Visual Art » Adventure Photojournals

Photojournal Travel & AdventureUrban Exploration

Beneath the Bay Area: Battery Dynamite — Subterranean Bunker Urban Exploration

somewhere beneath the Bay Area, Aug 6 2004

Last July, my late* trubbamaking companion was trying to find a shortcut down to the beach when he noticed a hole in a fence across the road, where someone had cut it away to allow a tree limb to grow through. Characteristically unable to resist, he climbed through it to explore, and, in a fantastic piece of luck, deep in the woods behind this fence he stumbled onto the surface entrances of what we only later learned was Battery Dynamite, a sprawling underground military facility dating back to World War 2. Several weeks later he brought me there, camera in hand, to explore the corridors of this creepy subterranean relic...

*Repeat visitors to this gallery will notice the change in epithet. In summer 2005, my former intrepid trubbamaking companion was killed in a freak dating accident. Don't mourn for him. He knew…

By Mike Kupietz First published December 31, 2023Photojournal| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=6711 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Visual Art » Adventure Photojournals

Photojournal Travel & AdventureRural Exploration

Subterranean Serendipity: UC Santa Cruz Porter Caves & the Hell Hole

9/30/2005

I was wandering the trails through the woods by UC Santa Cruz, taking some pictures of trees and stuff and trying to shake off a cold, when fate brought me by sheer happenstance onto this intriguing tableau:

Click any image to enlarge

Hmmm... a bunch of college students out in the middle of the woods... a hole with a ladder into the ground... me coincidentally carrying a camera... what to do... what to do?

The last in line down the hole invited me to follow them and in a moment I was here... this is the Porter Caves, right there on UCSC's campus.

The kids loaned me a spare flashlight, were astoundingly good-natured about the constant firing of my flash, and led me through room after muddy room of this....

While we were down there, one of the guys asked if anyone had been to…

By Mike Kupietz First published December 31, 2023Photojournal| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=6693 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Visual Art » Adventure Photojournals

Photojournal Travel & Adventure

Back To The Garden: A Visit to Pearl Fryar’s Topiary — photojournal

In August 2018 my mom and I decided to take a road trip from my sister's home in an un-named southern city, where I was crashing for a few months, to visit Pearl Fryar's Topiary Garden, in Bishopville, SC.

Pearl Fryar is a folk artist, famous for, in the 1980s, having cleared a three-acre cornfield next to his home and, with no training and using "throwaway" plants salvaged from a local nursery's discards, created a fantastic topiary garden, incorporating his own whimsical found-object assemblage sculptures in places, which has become a regional tourist attraction of sorts. As late as 2018, he was still maintaining it himself as he rounded the corner into his 80s.

While visiting, we had the good fortune to meet and chat briefly with Mr. Fryar himself, who came out to tend to the grounds while we were there. Nice fellow.…

By Mike Kupietz First published December 18, 2023Photojournal| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9697 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Writing » Topical Writing » Reviews & Criticism

Writing Music Review

I Like To Listen: “Peaks Island Ferry” by Dan Sonenberg — album review

Finally giving a listen to the prerelease of old friend Dan Sonenberg’s return to solo singer-songwriting, "Peaks Island Ferry". Rather than set down & give him feedback after it’s over, I’m gonna liveblog it here.

(For those who wade through all the below and/or are curious to hear the album, it's at https://dansonenberg.bandcamp.com/releases.)

Track 1: "Turn it over" Given that the baseline quality of even the bottom rung of Dan’s songs is somewhere north of "totally listenable", I’d say this is middle of the road for him, a solid B or B+. Not particularly adventurous in terms of songwriting, and slightly familiar to anyone who knows his influences, but literate and full of enough unique and vivid imagery to stand out from the pack. It also continues Dan's lifelong trajectory of finding ways to sneak weirder and weirder musical flourishes into conventional-on-the-surface songs in ways that…

By Mike Kupietz First published November 1, 2023Writing| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=9294 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Code & Algorithms » Finance

Code & Algorithms Finance & InvestingIndicators & Algos

Trading Tools: TradingView Pine Script Indicators, Algos & Experiments

Here's a collection of trading tools I wrote & shared on TradingView, a finance markets charting site, in their native Pine script. These were originally published on my old crypto trading site, ApopheniaPays.com.

These will only be of use to traders who have an account (free or paid) on TradingView.com.

By Mike Kupietz First published October 24, 2023Code & Algorithms| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=6544 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Code & Algorithms » Finance

Code & Algorithms CryptocurrencyExcelFinance Simulations

Untangling Uniswap? Demystifying DeFi? You Tell Me: An Excel-based DeFi Uniswap Liquidity Pool/Automated Market Maker Simulator

For a few years I was in cryptocurrency trading. Eventually, this led me to the wild west of decentralized finance tokens ("DeFi"), an exciting area that I feel has strong potential to be on the cutting edge of technology's potential to fundamentally reshape our society.

Decentralized Finance concept: The "Automated Market Maker"

Among the odd beasts you'll encounter on the frontiers of DeFi is the "Automated Market Maker" (AMM) managing a "liquidity pool", of which the most prominent current example is Uniswap. This is a decentralized algorithm running on the Etheruem network that serves the same purpose in DeFi markets as the large "market makers" and financial houses that retail traders are buying and selling from in the traditional stock market. In DeFi, instead of being privately run, these are open and communal, and operate by strict rules set up in "smart contracts" on the…

By Mike Kupietz First published October 23, 2023Code & Algorithms| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=6516 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Writing » I Can't Believe It's Not Poetry!

I Can't Believe It's Not Poetry! DoggerelPoems About Food

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Poetry!: “The Radish Is The Noisy’st Root…”

The radish is the noisy'st root,
Its vocal tack beyond dispute,
effusive in expounding truth—
so talkative, this verbal fruit.

In ages prior and aeons hence,
have poets, lost in reverence,
e'er had their solemn thoughts disturbed
in comp'ny of this verbal herb,

As, spicy, doth it bide its time
concocting tales in verse and rhyme,
and platitudes, as is its bent,
propounding truth, without relent.

O! Indiscrete and loose-lip'd mustard!
With secrets should it not be trustered,
lest ev'ry private thought and plan,
reverb'rate loud from your garden.

The carrot dreams in quietude,
The yam's indifference seems rude.
The leek a mute, and soon you'll learn,
The 'tato downright taciturn.

Confronted, then, by veggie basket
Minds inquis'tive may well ask it,
"Does none among ye speak…

By Mike Kupietz First published October 22, 2023I Can't Believe It's Not Poetry!| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=6465 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Writing » Topical Writing

Writing Artificial IntelligenceTechnosociology

Hey, You Got Your Social Awareness In My AI!: About Sexism In The AI Images On This Site

A number of the AI-generated images on this site contain artistic depictions of nudity, presented in a way that might seem to reasonably suggest some confusion between real artistic or aesthetic value, and what gives some people, perhaps including myself, some level of simple va-va-va-voom visual jollies.

Put simply: there's a lot of images of naked, topless, or scantily-dressed women in some of the image galleries here, but not so many men. Almost none, in fact.

Although it's in several galleries, this is most evident in, say, "Previsions of Johanna", where the many female figures, and only the female figures, all came out either nude, topless, or wearing a low-cut dress, while the male figures are always fully clothed from neck to wrists and ankles. In fact, the lone arguably male figure in that entire set that is wearing a loose tank top, rather than some kind…

By Mike Kupietz First published October 20, 2023Writing| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=6322 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Visual Art » Generative Illustrations » Interesting Leftovers & Bonus Galleries

Image Gallery AI Generative IllustrationIlluminated LyricsOuttakes

Work-In-Progress Postview: Previsions of Johanna — preliminary experiments

As I worked on my "Revisions Of Johanna" project, I generated a lot of images I really liked, but which didn't fit into the final project. I decided the best of them deserved their own gallery.

This page is a work in progress, I just kind of threw it up to get me started. I have plenty more images to sort through from this, plus I need to pare down these already posted ones to just the most interesting ones. But, still, you can get a good sense of what went on behind the scenes here, and hopefully, an understanding of why I didn't just want these putative rejects to sit unused forever on my hard drive.

One additional note about the content of these images in the context of social awareness: For anyone interested, I addressed some thoughts about sexism and bias in…

Posted by By Mike Kupietz First published October 20, 2023Tags: Image Gallery| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=6226 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Writing » Topical Writing
Posted inWriting Posted in genresMediaPropagandaManipulationPersuasion
Watch Your Intelligence: Critical Reading of a Flawed Information Source
Oct. 7, 2023
I had an interesting talk with my father yesterday. He had a 2-for-1 subscription offer to Mother Jones, and we got into a discussion when I told him I didn't like that magazine. Since then, I've been doing some thinking about how I pick my news sources, something I do very carefully, but have never thought about trying to explain. What I told him was, essentially, that Mother Jones is too biased, I don't feel like I can trust them to give the sides of a story that may not agree with their basic worldview, and I wind up feeling like have to do my own research into anything they say to verify I'm getting something like an accurate picture, and it takes a lot of time that I could be spending just reading better commentary.
Unlike a lot of people, I'm not terribly partisan about my…
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Posted by By Mike Kupietz First published October 20, 2023Tags: Writing| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=6198 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Code & Algorithms » Web
Posted inCode & Algorithms Posted in genresWeb DevelopmentjQuery
Usability Hell: How to make a completely unusable homepage in CSS3 and ~~jQuery~~Javascript
One of my favorite bits of code I've ever written is on the front page of my jiggy, ancient, perpetually-under-construction, virtually-never-viewed old personal website, Life In A Mikeycosm. Eager to make my front page "pop" a little more back in days gone by, I came up with a clever CSS3/javascript hack that caused the page text and logo to slip and slide in three dimensions in response to your mouse movements, rendering the page somewhere between difficult and totally unusable for actually navigating the content of the site. I've always been inordinately fond of this.
I've embedded it below so you can experience the source of my amusement. Actually, if you click through the above link to the real site, at the bottom left there's a "Stop this crazy thing" link that stops the animation and moves the links into rows so they're readable and clickable. I…
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Posted by By Mike Kupietz First published October 18, 2023Tags: Code & Algorithms| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=6159 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Code & Algorithms » MacOS & Desktop
Posted inCode & Algorithms Posted in genresJavascriptMacOS & App Customization
Thunderbird Customization: a FiltaQuilla “open mail folder on receiving mail” Javascript Action script
Among the many things the late, lamented Eudora email client spoiled me for was, when I checked my mail, opening all the mailboxes that had received mail in new windows. That way I could click through, looking at each mail window and closing it when I was done, and be sure I had seen all my new mail.
This is a javascript you can paste into the FiltaQuilla addon's "Javascript Action" filter action which brings this behavior to Thunderbird.
Following are the explanatory README, the script code, and license, embedded from my repo on Github at https://github.com/kupietools/filtaquilla-open-mail-folder-on-receiving-mail.
.emgithub-file pre {white-space:normal !important;} .emgithub-file tr, .emgithub-file td, .emgithub-file th, .emgithub-file span {min-width:32px !important;text-align: left !important; margin:2px 4px 0 0 !important;padding:2px !important;line-height:1.5em !important;}
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Posted by By Mike Kupietz First published October 18, 2023Tags: Code & Algorithms| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=6157 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

Writing » I Can't Believe It's Not Poetry!
Posted inWriting Posted in genresMetadoggerel
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Meta-Poetry!: Ode to “Ode To A Croaking Man”
O! Poem that spoke of a man who croaks,
were you not my own, I would quote you!
I would think that whomever composed you smokes dope,
but I know it ain't so, 'cause I wrote you.
Which poet is it, that constructed you, Ode?
'Twas myself! Though I scant deserve credit.
For a poem's not a poem 'less it stands on its o'en
through my 50 neurotic edits.
And forget let us not, the post-poem note!
Doleful lament upon poem just wrote,
pensively telling of muse that had flo'en.
Though reader, perhaps, was just glad poem was do'en.
NOTE:
The poet wishes it to be kno'en:
It's not his intent to promote or condo'en
the writing of poems about one's other poems.
Do as I say, not as I've do'en.
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Posted by By Mike Kupietz First published October 17, 2023Tags: Writing| Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=6151 | Share this | Embed link | Webmentions are: on

MICHAEL KUPIETZ| ARTS+CODE

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