As another year passes (Pigtails in Paint celebrated its 4th anniversary on February 15th), certain milestones come to mind:
Donations: We processed our first donation last month and I am so pleased to see that there are people who support us able to contribute in this way. Thankfully, for a few months at least, Pigtails’ expenses will not be coming out of my own pocket. As this site gains more academic recognition, people are beginning to notice that this is not a superficial enterprise, but an insightful hint into human nature and a hope for a compassionate world.
First Offer: Something I knew about Pip Starr that most people didn’t is that he is an artist in his own right. Over the years, he was inspired by various material and has produced compelling work from that inspiration. Although much of his work is derivative, he infuses a personal artistic passion to it, giving an added vitality. I kept prodding him about offering his work to the readers and he has finally and cautiously done so on his Winter Moran post. This piece is still on offer for anyone who would like to purchase it and I am available to help facilitate things if necessary. It is not my intent for Pigtails to serve as a sales site, but if any artist has something worthy to offer that would not be appropriate in another forum, I will consider such requests on a case by case basis.
Terahertz! Our internet host informed me last month that our bandwidth has exceeded the terahertz range. Now I have to admit that I do not completely understand what this means, but he assures me that Pigtails is experiencing a lot of volume and this is a testimony to what this site offers people. “Tera-” is a metric prefix denoting a trillion.
Readers and associates continue to send me little tidbits that are worth mentioning but do not warrant a dedicated post:
A Valentine: There is a small but touching item of a man who took his 6-year-old daughter out for dinner on Valentine’s Day and someone was so moved by the poignant scene that they left a nice note and paid their restaurant tab. You can check it out here.
A Facelift for Dolls: In the furor about corporate over-sexualization of young girls, there has been the predictable backlash from moral fundamentalists. But a more constructive form comes from a woman in Australia who takes thrown out dolls and gives them a new look. Of particular interest is that real little girls prefer these more realistic dolls to those oft-cited and slutty Bratz dolls. The creator calls them “Tree Change Dolls” and you can watch a short video about her story here.
Tate Reopens Access to Ovenden Landscapes: As I mentioned in the Graham Ovenden post, a cloud of suspicion has hung over this artist. In response, The Tate Modern has denied public access to his works kept in their collection—even for legitimate academic purposes. Last month, The Tate reopened access to Ovenden’s landscapes. You can see an article on this here. In the debate over censorship, there is always the implied assumption that reasonable people cannot judge for themselves. To commemorate this news, I have decided—when time allows—to post all the Ovenden images that once appeared on the Tate website. An associate, realizing how things can suddenly be censored, took the precaution of saving the images and then later shared them with me. I will be posting them on a page in the “Image Research Library” section of this site. Even though the news reports that The Tate is only offering access to the landscapes, I have been informed that any of the Ovenden images can be viewed by appointment only.
Little Orphan Images: A “Wish List” has already been established to solicit help from readers when a little more information is needed to put together a post. I also feel a need to post images that I sense are important or part of something important. Because I received certain images out of context, I do not know the sources or intent. Therefore—again when time permits—I will be establishing a “Little Orphan Images” page to solicit help in identifying artists or films in which an image may have appeared.
Finally, I would like to thank our contributing writers who have broken new ground and helped keep things going while Pip and I pursue leads and develop posts. Best Wishes to all in the coming year, -Ron
Bandwith is a term coming from communication theory, which originally meant width of the frequency band used for transmission (through an analogic medium, like radio waves). Since information was transmitted by amplitude or frequency modulation, each unit of information required using a frequency slot of fixed width for a fixed duration, so the amount of information that can be transmitted is proportional to bandwith multiplied by time. In contemporary purely digital communications, bandwidth means thus amount of information (in bits) per unit of time. One hertz is a frequency one cycle per second, it is related to the previous technology where digital information was converted through Modems into frequencies, so PIP’s terahertz means 10 to the 12th power of cycles per seconds, where a cycle is proportional to one bit. It is thus like downloading one million images of 125 kilobytes (1 byte = 8 bits) every second.
Wordpress statistics can tell you the number of visitors and views each day.
Note that for big numbers, you use the “short scale” originating from the US, continental Europe uses the “long scale” (billion = million millions, trillion = million billions), see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales
Thank you for the clarification. I also remember as a kid learning that the Europeans have a different naming system for large numbers. The US really likes to do its own thing, doesn’t it? Except for scientific applications, the US makes little use of the SI metric units. Our gasoline (petrol) is measured in gallons and our travel distances in miles.
Back in the 1970’s, it looked like the U.S. was going to convert to the Metric System as the other English-speaking countries were doing.
I was all FOR IT.
In the end, it never happened in the U.S.
CONGRATULATIONS on your fourth anniversary!
And keep up the good work.