Many folks who see my work have no idea what vacuum tubes are.  Having worked all of my professional life in technical fields, I take these funny glass bottles as nothing unusual, even though they are now rare and mostly obsolete, and unless you have some direct need for them, there's no need to know what they are or what they do.  No longer are they found in everyday use, relegated to the esoteric of guitar amps, expensive Hi-Fi, and exotic circuits of various intent.  Once commonly available, even in department stores, they now require some searching to find.  Yet somehow, from those ancient piles of tubes at Sears, and perhaps from various surplus stores and repair shops and who knows where else, overflowing boxes of these old time gadgets have collected themselves in my garage.

I say collected themselves because I couldn't tell you if I tried how I came to have so many.  It's a sure thing I bought as many as I could, keeping them on hand to restore old radios, a one time hobby of mine.  And where I sold most of my radios, I never unloaded any of the tubes.  They take up little space, relatively, and are fascinating to look at, especially the large transmitting tubes.

Looking into a tube is like looking into a crystal.  No 2 are alike, even 2 of the same type.  Wires may be a little off kilter, glass a little imperfect, labels stamped a little sideways.  Each is unique, if you take the time to look for individual qualities.  And if you imagine them larger than life, a private world, an electronic forest, could exist in each one.

I started drawing vacuum tubes the Summer before last, or maybe before.  Not sure really, but I was cleaning the basement of the old house and had a box of tubes outside.  Prior to that, I had been trying to figure out a way to draw them, but to draw them as if they had some life.  I had powered up a radio chassis, thinking if the tubes were on and glowing they might be more interesting, but the glow sort of washed out details, and while they look gorgeous when warm, there was something missing.  In the August sun, however, they came to life like never before.  The really do look like crystals, and somehow sticking that box of tubes outside to make room for a dusting was what I needed.

It's only in direct sunlight where the tubes sparkle.  And they do sparkle.  See, inside each tube is more glass, the section at the bottom where the wires and innards collect and are connected to the pins on the bottom.  This glass does amazing things with light, and when seen through the envelope, the outer glass, there is light dancing all over the place.  Which makes springtime in Portland a rejuvenating time for me and my work.  When the sun finally comes out, direct sun, not cloud filtered pseudo sun we see all winter, I can work with my vacuum tubes again.  And after leaving them alone all winter, it feels like starting a new project, not like continuing an ongoing one, which is really what I'm doing.

This week I've unpacked those boxes of tubes, and started looking through some of the larger ones, transmitting tubes, thinking about a larger piece.  I'll add a few more works of the same size, but maybe I'll do one really large.  I like to work on an ever increasing scale, and I hope to draw some tubes larger than what I've been drawing.  Who knows.  Maybe this Spring, I'll find a big tube that can fill a big page.

I discovered Vonnegut in high school.  His unique style of writing seemed tailored to my impressionable mind, so much so that it caused me to want to write, and I eventually studied writing in college.  I don't write anymore, at least not for publication, but Vonnegut always was, and remains, a strong artistic influence.  While Vonnegut influences and inspires my writing, I am also influenced and inspired as an artist.  Perhaps that inspiration is obvious, perhaps not.

Vonnegut's books have staying power.  Unlike so many works I once found profound, but no longer do in relative maturity, a Vonnegut novel is one I can read today with as much appreciation as I did 30 years ago.  They seem powerful in different ways to the man I am today compared to the boy I was then, but powerful they remain.  And I am sad to read of his passing.

Today Kurt Vonnegut is dead.  So it goes.

About 10 years ago I bought a new car, a black Ford Mustang.  I drove it off the lot and continued to drive it for 5 years.  Ford never asked for it back to improve performance, or security, or to fix any bugs.  I turned the key and it went.  I put gas in it when it was empty, I drove it around Idaho and Oregon, and it never broke.  It was a quality machine, completely reliable, and usable, right from the factory.

About 5 years ago I bought a new preamp for my stereo, a Conrad-Johnson PV-10B.  The sound is amazing.  Right out of the box it improved my stereo in wonderful ways, and continues to sound ever gorgeous.  I bought a set of replacement tubes, but have yet to install them.  I just like to have them around, but they may not be needed for a while.  I've not had to upgrade the amp to improve performance or security, or to fix any flaws.  It just works.

Last week I installed Office 2007 on my computer.  It's slow as molasses.  A real dog of a product.  It's a pile of software that just runs like crap.  This morning I received the usual notice of Microsoft updates, and lo and behold, it was an update for Office 2007.  Apparently, Microsoft knows how to make Outlook faster.  No shit, guys, really?  You mean to tell me you had to wait for your customers to decide if it was slow instead of just not making it slow in the first place?

My problem with the whole concept of software updates is that they imply all software is a work in progress.  At some point I want the product done.  Microsoft sells their software as product, and when I buy a product I expect that product to be complete.  Yet somehow it never is.  I'm OK with OSS patches and upgrades, but if I paid for it, I want it sealed and done and usable with no further adjustment necessary.

I'm out of patience with security patches, bug fixes, performance upgrades, genuine advantage upgrades, malicious software removal tools, and all the other garbage Microsoft wants me to take a not insignificant part of a workday, each week, to apply to my computer.  As if their incompetence is somehow my fault, or as if I have paid to somehow be part of their development team, patching and fixing and fucking with their software as if I should care.

Listen to me now.  If you can't figure out how to build software that just works without ever having to touch it again, at least figure out how to create a patch that doesn't require a system restart.  I don't want to stop work mid-morning to reboot for yet-another-patch, and, being one of those oddballs that never really stops working, thus leaving things in progress or open all the time on my computer, I don't want to walk into the studio in the morning and find the computer has rebooted itself for yet-another-patch.

At this point I resolve only to turn off all automatic updates on all applications and the OS.  I'm done.  No more patches.  And if I get hacked, or otherwise exploited, I'll still blame Microsoft, fair or not.  I thinks it's time for all of us to say enough is enough.  No more patches!  Oh, and while I'm at it, I think I'll get rid of this Office 2007 nonsense as well.

Several years ago I participated in a study of Website usability.  The exercise tested users' ability to see things on a Web page, and was based on a published report of a similar study.  Each user was asked to look at a page for a certain time, then, with monitor turned off, asked to draw what was seen.  The drawings captured the major parts of the page, but in all, many things were missing.  it seems only a small portion of what is on a Web page is actually seen.

I'm as guilty as anyone else.  Seeing things on a page just because they are there is not productive.  I want only what I am on a page to find.  That one link to the information I seek, the image I find useful, or the phone number of the party I want to dial.  Rarely do I look at an entire page and enjoy all of the elements it contains.  Unless, of course, I built the page.

Web pages aside, I'm not so sure we don't miss more of the world around us than we see.  I'm convinced I see too little of my environment, and often make an effort to just look.  Look at the space around me...look at the ground...look at the buildings.  Portland, for example, has some spectacular architecture in plain view.  All I have to do to see it is look up, but rarely do I.

Drawing a picture or painting a painting is an exercise in detail.  My work is about detail, ever increasing detail, and I know if a piece isn't going well because I can't see, or feel for that matter, the details in the progression.  Often I'll spend more time just looking at a subject, especially a complex one like a vacuum tube or aircraft, hoping to see more, thinking I'm missing something.  I can spend over an hour just looking.  And most times it pays off.  If I take the time to just look, the actual drawing goes much quicker.  It's a bit of a paradox, actually, because seeing the details means taking much longer to finish a piece, but the actual working time is about half, with little or no rework.  Maybe it's not the most efficient way to work, but I discover something new about every subject because I take the time to look at the details.