EAT
AT BOOMERRANGER'S
WEB-O-MATIC
(WHAT EVER'S ON MY DESKTOP GOES IN) PORTFOLIO of art, words, music, genealogy
and old photographs
by
Robert Watkins
This is an encapsulated desktop portfolio. Everything on my desktop qualifies for inclusion. Rendered for your amusement are my drawings, paintings, sculptures and computer graphics -- whatever I call my art. Anti thematic by nature (my desktop) it packs icons of a day in the life journal, works in progress, (or under construction like the music page) Also personal stuff like my genealogy records, old photographs, my resume, pictures of dogs I miss, including lost dog. If what is on my desktop is about me or utilities found in tripod, then I put it in a dossier folder/page.
In fact I'm trying to do something here: to articulate a quasi verisimilitude of "what it be-like to be my desktop." Beginning backwards, the site started with a map of what I wanted, future site map. Construction continues one pixel at a time, with estimated completion around 2000.
Until then I try to remain patient
by remembering what a famous German philosopher said while organizing his
desktop: "I sink therefore I swim."
I could talk to you for hours about the portfolios I've seen and
made. I love a good portfolio and love talking about them. Graphics are
like socks and a portfolio is like a shoe. Huh? Well the portfolio can
sometimes enhance the graphic, as I've tried to do here. Because I have
a good supply of portfolios
I hope to be able to advance into more original and entertaining web portfolios
in the future.
The JPEG graphics in my portfolio
were all created by me during the past five years accept for a few older
pictures. I would have very much liked to use the P-JPEG format instead.
Most of these pictures are either in my print portfolio or video reel and
some have been published in magazines. Without going into a big deal about
it, creating this site was very difficult for me because I like to use
all new stuff and have several motifs to choose from. The graphic look
is not exactly what I wanted, but for my first web site I'm going with
what you see.
Animated graphics and templates
provided by Tripod are different from my work by the lack of copyright
notice, such as the under construction page. I've used the Tripod templates
and animation's sparingly and have tried to make it clear where I created
the original art.
The animation used for boomerranger's home page (the
ball and color divider) were provided by Tripod Media Library. The
animation on the under
construction page was also made available by Tripod. Although I have
hours of video animation I've made on various computers, I haven't used
any on this site. For my next project I will create all original graphics
and animation.
Half were made with Tripod templates and half were made with Netscape Composer. Just as I'm nearing completion I've started learning front-page and might revamp everything. Tripod is of course slower than using Composer, but for getting a site up and running without learning HTML - Tripod has a lot of advantages.
From the beginning I planned what
I wanted a web site for and created a site map first, then tried to build
around it. First I used only Tripod template and inserted my copy and my
JPEG files. Then as I learned Composer I found it was easier to produce
pages that would be changed often, such as my art links.
front-page combined with several
graphics programs offers a lot of positive design freedom. But so far I
believe I'll have to use a dozen HTML editors and graphics programs to
ever get what I want.
The computer graphic "boomerranger's home page" was created originally as a video tag for my animation reel. Afterwards Computer Graphics World magazine used it for a promotional mailing, still later I used it in my print portfolio and now it's on the web.
I created it around 1981 I think,
on an Aurora paint and animation system for television news graphics. I
first used this system in California. Dr. Richard Shoup created the Aurora
after working at Xerox Palo Alto where legend has it the inklings of Apple
first appeared. Aurora was up and running with pull down menu's way before
Mac but cost about 100,000 dollars more.
Eventually my piano and guitar
music will be included on this site. I haven't been able to edit any tapes
recently or compose something for this site.
THE HOST TRIPOD
I was surfing around see, and
landed on Tripod and filled out the forms and wow 11 megs of web space
for free, I didn't know I needed it, but now I know I really need it. What
at first was a fun experiment became an obsessive hobby. Tripod has a lot
of useful tools and good help service. They've improved their product since
I've been using it and it's swell as far as I'm concerned. Hey join the
fun, make your own pages at Tripod, lets form a pod.
