Sunday, February 16, 2003
Museum |9:32 PM| Went to Houston yesterday, to see a variety of great Polish works, (as well as some French masterpieces that Moscow collectors had purchased) including a work by Da Vinci. I had no idea that Lady with Ermine was a Da Vinci.
I loved this painting well before I knew who had painted it. I thought it was masterful before all the "baggage" of knowing it was a masterpiece.
(Insert about the crowd, breaking the crowd here)
The trip up there took 2 and a half hours, I drove Portalstar, her roomate, and the boyfriend of said roommate. That we spent 5 hours in a car together and didn't end up eating each other speaks very well of how we get along.
A moment of note on the trip there.
Once you leave Austin and head into the wilderness you quickly enter Bumfuck, Texas. We stopped at Cracker Barrel for breakfast, and besides the bad vibes that Portalstar's roomate and the roomate's boyfriend were getting for being "interracial", we heard the following exchange:
Woman: "They seat black people at this resteraunt?"
Man: "Yeah, it's sort of a college town, they're a lot more liberal here."
What the fuck?. How do you even attempt to counter act the generations of dumbfuckery that went into that statement?
But that was a low point of an otherwise really exciting (if tiring) trip. The museum we visited clearly had done a lot of work for the exibits, and their automated tour system was worthy of mention. Small devices with a keypad were issued to each patron, and when the number next to a painting was typed in, a great deal of additional information was played on good quality headphones. All in all, it was a remarkable presentation.
Portalstar put up with a lot of my questions, and I managed to learn a great deal about what went into each work. I had no idea that some of the larger paintings were not done exclusively by the painter himself, that they often had studios of assistants helping to do the more repetetive tasks. Or that tempera consists of raw pigment mixed with egg whites, and that "roaches love it". PortalStar also pointed out something I hadn't thought of at all, that a part of the excitement at seeing these works first hand is that the actual artist worked with this very object. That when you viewed it, you were standing the same distance as him or her, when they made it. It took a bit for me to grasp that, that it was a physical link to that work so many hundreds of years ago.
The drive back was uneventful, a draining day all around.
Museum |9:32 PM| Went to Houston yesterday, to see a variety of great Polish works, (as well as some French masterpieces that Moscow collectors had purchased) including a work by Da Vinci. I had no idea that Lady with Ermine was a Da Vinci.
I loved this painting well before I knew who had painted it. I thought it was masterful before all the "baggage" of knowing it was a masterpiece.
(Insert about the crowd, breaking the crowd here)
The trip up there took 2 and a half hours, I drove Portalstar, her roomate, and the boyfriend of said roommate. That we spent 5 hours in a car together and didn't end up eating each other speaks very well of how we get along.
A moment of note on the trip there.
Once you leave Austin and head into the wilderness you quickly enter Bumfuck, Texas. We stopped at Cracker Barrel for breakfast, and besides the bad vibes that Portalstar's roomate and the roomate's boyfriend were getting for being "interracial", we heard the following exchange:
Woman: "They seat black people at this resteraunt?"
Man: "Yeah, it's sort of a college town, they're a lot more liberal here."
What the fuck?. How do you even attempt to counter act the generations of dumbfuckery that went into that statement?
But that was a low point of an otherwise really exciting (if tiring) trip. The museum we visited clearly had done a lot of work for the exibits, and their automated tour system was worthy of mention. Small devices with a keypad were issued to each patron, and when the number next to a painting was typed in, a great deal of additional information was played on good quality headphones. All in all, it was a remarkable presentation.
Portalstar put up with a lot of my questions, and I managed to learn a great deal about what went into each work. I had no idea that some of the larger paintings were not done exclusively by the painter himself, that they often had studios of assistants helping to do the more repetetive tasks. Or that tempera consists of raw pigment mixed with egg whites, and that "roaches love it". PortalStar also pointed out something I hadn't thought of at all, that a part of the excitement at seeing these works first hand is that the actual artist worked with this very object. That when you viewed it, you were standing the same distance as him or her, when they made it. It took a bit for me to grasp that, that it was a physical link to that work so many hundreds of years ago.
The drive back was uneventful, a draining day all around.
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We need one created for the years, and then the months. The months are the /////tricky ones, since they need their ID to increase more than the years, but since the functions keep referencing ///// the same name system, we have to be careful not to make the years close up when we click on a month. ///Set some Variables $YearMenuID = 1; /////What ID the preceding year link controls. Needs to be same for all the months under a given year. $MonthMenuID= 1; ////What ID the preceding month link controls. Needs to be the same for all the weeks under a given ////Month but not the same as any year, etc. $LastYearUsed = 0; $LastMonthUsed = 0; echo '
';
//That should close up the previous year.
///Say this is the swap from 2001 to 2002, that should close up the 2001 links.
///Problem is, we also need to close up the final month links too.
/// echo '07/15/2001", "07/29/2001", "08/12/2001", "08/19/2001", "08/26/2001", "09/23/2001", "09/30/2001", "10/07/2001", "10/14/2001", "10/21/2001", "10/28/2001", "11/04/2001", "11/11/2001", "11/18/2001", "11/25/2001", "12/02/2001", "12/09/2001", "12/16/2001", "12/23/2001", "12/30/2001", "01/06/2002", "01/13/2002", "01/20/2002", "01/27/2002", "02/03/2002", "02/10/2002", "02/17/2002", "02/24/2002", "03/03/2002", "03/10/2002", "03/17/2002", "03/24/2002", "03/31/2002", "04/07/2002", "04/14/2002", "04/21/2002", "04/28/2002", "05/05/2002", "05/12/2002", "05/19/2002", "05/26/2002", "06/02/2002", "06/09/2002", "06/16/2002", "06/23/2002", "06/30/2002", "07/07/2002", "07/14/2002", "07/21/2002", "07/28/2002", "08/04/2002", "08/11/2002", "08/18/2002", "08/25/2002", "09/01/2002", "09/08/2002", "09/15/2002", "09/22/2002", "09/29/2002", "10/06/2002", "10/13/2002", "10/20/2002", "10/27/2002", "11/03/2002", "11/10/2002", "11/17/2002", "11/24/2002", "12/01/2002", "01/05/2003", "01/12/2003", "01/19/2003", "01/26/2003", "02/02/2003", "02/09/2003", "02/16/2003", "02/23/2003", "03/02/2003", "03/09/2003", "03/16/2003", "03/23/2003", "03/30/2003", "04/06/2003", "04/13/2003", "04/20/2003", "04/27/2003", "05/04/2003", "05/11/2003", "05/18/2003", "05/25/2003", "06/01/2003", "06/08/2003", "06/15/2003", "06/22/2003", "06/29/2003", "07/06/2003", "07/13/2003", "07/20/2003", "07/27/2003", "08/03/2003", "08/10/2003", "08/24/2003", "09/07/2003", "09/14/2003", "10/12/2003", "10/19/2003", "10/26/2003", "12/07/2003", "12/14/2003", "12/21/2003", "12/28/2003", "01/11/2004", "01/18/2004", "01/25/2004", "02/01/2004", "02/08/2004", "02/15/2004", "02/22/2004", "02/29/2004", "03/07/2004", "03/14/2004", "03/21/2004", "03/28/2004", "04/04/2004", "04/11/2004", "04/18/2004", "04/25/2004", "05/02/2004", "05/09/2004", "05/16/2004", "05/23/2004", "05/30/2004", "06/06/2004", "06/13/2004", "06/20/2004", "06/27/2004", "07/04/2004", "07/11/2004", "07/18/2004", "07/25/2004", "08/01/2004", "08/08/2004", "08/15/2004", "08/22/2004", "08/29/2004", "09/05/2004", "09/19/2004", "09/26/2004", "10/03/2004", "10/10/2004", "10/17/2004", "10/24/2004", "10/31/2004", "11/07/2004", "11/14/2004", "11/21/2004", "11/28/2004", "12/05/2004", "12/12/2004", "01/16/2005", "01/30/2005", "02/20/2005", "02/27/2005", "03/06/2005", "03/13/2005", "03/27/2005", "04/10/2005", "04/17/2005", "04/24/2005", "05/01/2005", "05/08/2005", "05/15/2005", "05/22/2005", "07/03/2005", "07/10/2005", "07/24/2005", "07/31/2005", "09/18/2005", "12/11/2005", "12/18/2005", "12/25/2005", "01/01/2006", "01/08/2006", "02/26/2006", "03/05/2006", "03/12/2006", "03/19/2006", "03/26/2006", "04/02/2006", "04/09/2006", "04/16/2006", "04/23/2006", "05/28/2006", "10/08/2006", "11/05/2006", "11/12/2006", "11/19/2006", "11/26/2006", "12/10/2006", "12/17/2006", "12/24/2006", "12/31/2006", "01/07/2007", "01/14/2007", "01/21/2007", "01/28/2007", "02/04/2007", "02/11/2007", "02/18/2007", "02/25/2007", "03/04/2007", "03/11/2007", "03/18/2007", "03/25/2007", "04/01/2007", "04/08/2007", "04/15/2007", "04/22/2007", "04/29/2007", "05/06/2007", "05/13/2007", "05/20/2007", "06/03/2007", "06/10/2007", "06/17/2007", "06/24/2007", "07/01/2007", "07/08/2007", "07/15/2007", "07/22/2007", "07/29/2007", "08/05/2007", "08/19/2007", "08/26/2007", "09/02/2007", "09/09/2007", "09/16/2007", "09/30/2007", "10/07/2007", "10/14/2007", "10/21/2007", "10/28/2007", "11/25/2007", "12/02/2007", "12/09/2007", "12/16/2007", "01/13/2008", "01/20/2008", "02/10/2008", "02/17/2008", "03/09/2008", "03/30/2008", "05/11/2008", "05/18/2008", "05/25/2008", "06/01/2008", "06/08/2008", "06/15/2008", "06/22/2008", "06/29/2008", "07/06/2008", "07/13/2008", "07/20/2008", "07/27/2008", "08/10/2008", "11/08/2009", ); //Pulls stuff out from the given string (assuming it is the right length) //51 places in should be the year. function ExtractYear($WholeDateString) { ////String extract the first part, up until 60 $StringYear = substr($WholeDateString, 60); ///extract everything before the _ $StringYear = strtok($StringYear, "_"); return $StringYear; } function ExtractMonth($WholeURlMonth) { /////Extract the month $WholeURlMonth = substr($WholeURlMonth, 65); $WholeURlMonth = strtok($WholeURlMonth, "_"); return $WholeURlMonth; } function ExtractWeek($WholeURLWeek) { /////Extract the week, which will be the title of each link $WholeURLWeek = substr($URLWeek, 81); $WholeURLWeek = strtok($URLWeek, "<"); echo $WholeURLWeek; } $MyDateArray = array('01' => 'January', '02' => 'February', '03' => 'March', '04' => 'April', '05' => 'May', '06' => 'June', '07' => 'July', '08' => 'August', '09' => 'September', '10' => 'October', '11' => 'November', '12' => 'December'); ///Extract ///$StringMonth /////We need to know which DIV we're in. We need one created for the years, and then the months. The months are the /////tricky ones, since they need their ID to increase more than the years, but since the functions keep referencing ///// the same name system, we have to be careful not to make the years close up when we click on a month. ///Set some Variables $YearMenuID = 1; /////What ID the preceding year link controls. Needs to be same for all the months under a given year. $MonthMenuID= 1; ////What ID the preceding month link controls. Needs to be the same for all the weeks under a given ////Month but not the same as any year, etc. $LastYearUsed = 0; $LastMonthUsed = 0; echo '
';
/////That should be the "Year" div. All the years should be in this one DIV.
///Start the main loop.
foreach ($myDateArray as $key => $value) {
////Pulling the year/date.
$month = ExtractMonth($value);
$year = ExtractYear($value);
$YearMenuID = $year;
$MonthMenuID = $month;
$PrettyMonth = $MyDateArray[$month];
////Is this a new year?
If ($year != $LastYearUsed)
///Then we need to put the year down. No DIV created quite yet.
{
///First off, we need to close the preceding year's DIV. Twice if it ain't 2001
if ($year != 2001)
{
echo '
';
}
echo '