Airplane Barbie Kachina Machine

I visited a metal sculptor during the Eldorado Open Studios last week and decided that I could just weld a buncha dropbin-bits together and install the results in my arroyo as a project for my executors.

Here's the first day's effort:

With some hair added:

More layers are in process.


I would like to point out that these photos were taken with my new Android Tablet -- yes I drank the data-koolaide and signed up for the Verizon package because my usually trusty notebook computer refuses to work anywhere but at home. So far I have been mostly unimpressed with my ability to do anything that I would actually want to do with the tablet....

It just refuses to accept either of my email addresses as secure enough to be used. So I have to use a rather clunky webmail interface or else be slowly sucked into gmail, google-drive, and google-knows what other "services" the GooglePlexers mine on my behalf.

It will not allow  my WinXP desktop to copy files to it via USB -- I can get files off of it -- if I set it to Camera mode -- and it works just fine in MTP mode on a friend's Win7 box -- as far as I can tell the only "advantage" of MTP over the good old mass-storage USB mode, (transparently) used by every jump drive in existence, is that it inserts Digital Rights Management in your channel. Every web-advice-site I've found while searching for a solution says it should just work, or maybe I need to update Windows Media Player, or download a driver package, or something. Been there, done it all.

I tried to make this blog entry using the (Google supplied) blogger.com upload image option and it just sat there saying it was (thinking about whether it was ok to) uploading images. So I'm back to the desktop which still seems to work, despite the hours I spent downloading and upgrading everything in sight in the ultimately futile effort to get the USB to work.

The default little Pen Memo app that comes with the tablet seems kinda useful. Until you find that there is no way to re-edit an existing memo and the memos are saved as images so you can't even get text out of them into something else should you have the desire to, say, check off items on your shopping list. I did find a couple of free replacement candidates, but they both have billions of options to wade through in order to make a note and then hide their files to prevent you from using your data with other apps.

Every app pops up a set of mysterious icons to perform its functions. The only way I have found to figure out what they do is to click-on them and see. Sometimes they pop up other apps, sometimes a menu, sometimes they exit the program. At least they ask you if it's OK to delete the operating system before just going ahead. So far.

Plus the integration between apps and competing file formats is less than transparent. I still can't figure out where some files are saved so the only way to access them is to open their specific app. Now lets see, that book I was reading...was it on Kindle, GoogleBooks, or hmm... Maybe it was a raw PDF file? Oh well, fuck it...

I suppose I'm just being a luddite whiner. Maybe if I start using the thing for all my daily tasks I will come to realize that it is indispensable. As long as I do what it wants  me to do.