since none of us have ever seen him/her, perhaps we might all "imagine" what it looks like. . .

(that's the best way i knew to put it without talking about the thing we're not supposed to talk about here.)

some of the work i do from week to week is help publish a weekly newspaper. . .
layout pages, pre-press prep and design ads for our advertisers.

whilst designing the ads, sometimes i need a bit of artwork (like for these past two weeks it's been valentine bits)so rather than rummage through discs or buying something it's usually quicker if i just draw something myself.

the result is, i have a folder full of bits of clipart i've done, christmas, new years etc.etc.etc, used once or twice and forgotten about.

i thought it might be like that for other members too and if it were, we might all pool our resources on a community portfolio and share each other's work freely.

just another idea to get everyone's work "out there". . .

Whenever I get braindead, and can't come up with something artistic, I whip up some skins and textures for something in the future. Got a pretty good little stockpile. was thinking of making an avatar bank, start a site.

Good god! I remember when clip art hit. It was basically a pick pocket to artists everywhere. One year I was doing tons of little B&W stuff for text books the next not so much. A lot of work was lost to those services. I have thought about taking my huge stockpile of line art and trying to sell some of it to a service. Anybody here ever d that?

I have never once used clip art. It used to come in books(BC before comps)and letraset rubons. It always looked cheesy to me, and I figured if I wanted that image bad enough, I'd draw it myself.

Yes it is mostly crap, but folks were using it like toilet paper. Too bad they weren't using it FOR toilet paper. There are a couple of clip art "houses" out there now that put out a little bit better stuff, but it still isn't the same as having a professional make something to exactly fit your needs.

I just heard something that I think is friggin' scary as all get out. Cell phone companies can track where you are at any time when you have your cell phone. They are talking about using this information in two ways. The first is to have a service for advertisers such that when you are walking by a Starbucks coffee house they will ring you with a coupon. Or say you are looking at an Epson printer in Best Buy. HP could ring you with a coupon for a comparable model. Sounds good until you think about the invasion of privacy issues. This stuff creeps me out.
The other is a service that would be marketed mostly at younger people. You'd be able to subscribe to a service where you could track where your buddies are at any time using their cell phone locations. Again all fine and dandy until someone wants to track you for the wrong reasons. Corporations are getting out of hand and if we keep supporting them by buying their invasive technology, we'll get what we deserve.

Well good night patrons of this fine establishment.

good grief franklyn, that is scary! you see that sort of thing in films and think that'll never happen, but oh no mateys its happening right now. my husband refuses to have a mobile fone, I used to think he was weird, but he won't jump on the techno bandwagon, (not just because of this sort of big brother sh*t) but he refuses to believe he needs to tell people he's "on the train" (does anyone really use their mobs for any other reason?) i wont take out store cards either, i hate to think the big boys no what I'm buying and when, so they can target me with offers

I resisted getting one for years too. I knew the possibility of abuse was there. I have seen it time and time again, that if you give the powerful a grudging inch the will wrestle it from you and call in experts, reinvest, And find a way to take any thing you don't have tied down. The sad part is that all these wide eyed little techno geeks will think how cool is it that I can get ads anywhere and any time? How cool is it that I can know when my mate is shagging his bosses wife by his location? The fact that Government or corporations are using that same info for whatever self serving reason, doesn't seem to matter any more. We blithely sit by and think, "well golly, with technology there is no privacy any mpre." WRONG!!! You have to fight to keep your privacy or Government will take it.

WEll today a much weakened storm front should hit us here in Florida. It killed 52 people in Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, and Georgia. It really should just be a thunderstorm by the time it gets here though. It's scary how quick something like a tornado can hit and change everything in your world. There are times when my troubles seem few and today is one of those days. My thoughts go out to those who lost so much.

Your surprised by personal intrusion in technology, and you're on one of the number one personal data trackers that ever existed. Just look at the 3D map on your home page. I'm sure there's a real-time version stashed away in some government headquarters. Big Brother isn't watching, anymore. He has completely crawled under our skin. It started with the television set, 60 years ago. Corporations saw it as a great propaganda tool. Now, a large population of the world can't go a day without watching something on a monitor. Makes me wish for the Wild Wild West!

Hey Boys And Girls it sounds all doom and gloom in the pup today.

I am sorry to here about the devastation caused by the tornados becuase there is very little you can do about natural distruction. I do tend to monitor what is going on over the pond becuase generally Falmouth cops for the milder version a couple of days later dependant on wind direction and it frightens me to death with the weakened version. I dread to think wot its like up front.
Batten down the hatches Franklin have a large one I would

As for the phones thats really scary
What will the advertisers do next?
The paper trail here is bad enough I have a full bag each week for recycling.
The landline phone Ive had to pay to block cold callers it got so bad.

I feel sorry for the youngsters becuase they are so easily led by advertising especially when their friends are using it.
What can we do??

Drop the bombs and start all over again! lol I guess I'm gloomy 'cause I gotta go another 6 months without football. And one of my onlines is down for a week, for a major overhaul. Naturally, it's the site that I have the most work to do on. But other than that, I'll have a Long Island Ice Tea, in a jug, please.

it's true about the cell phone thing and targeted GPS was around long before we knew it. franklin's right it's a privacy issue so what's the solution. . .
turn the damned thing off.

it's likewise with banking. use a local bank rather than one of a corporate chain.

my friends, with a little creative thinking it is possible to live a good life, off big brother's grid.

I know that the Government has had the tools to track us for years. It's just that it is getting easier and easier and no one seems to care. Some folks actually like the idea. That's the thing that scares me most.

they will like the idea until they realize that it is happening to them when they don't want it to. My phone has the feature to disable the GPS feature. weather it actually does or not I only know it says it is off.

I am in Kentucky and the storms were pretty rough. Here in Lexington was spotty some parts got it worse than others. We lost power for abour 4 hours but no damamge.

Hi Richard. I m glad you escaped any real danger. Back when we had those three hurricanes here in Florida starting with Charley, I was without power for almost a month total. It really was no fun at all. Thank goodness I had friends that would let me come over and take a hot shower and such or I would have lost my mind! It was hot and humid and gross. I also had to cut some trees off the top of the house, but there was no damage to the house.

I can deal with hurricanes though. They are not small and intense like tornados. Tornados are small concentrated funnels of death. No sir, I don't like 'em.

"I know that the Government has had the tools to track us for years. It's just that it is getting easier and easier and no one seems to care. Some folks actually like the idea. That's the thing that scares me most." Franklin Ayers

Unfortunately, Franklin, we've been giving up our civil liberties for quite some time, now, voluntarily. Via various trendy political crusades ie. The War against Poverty, against Drugs, against Terrorism, etc. our freedoms have been chiseled away, bit by bit. All under the guise of protecting our future generations from the harsh realities of life. Unfortunately, BY protecting them in this manner, we also weaken them to a childlike level. And as we all know, children can be easily manipulated.

Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels laid out a ten step template for controling the hearts and minds of the German people(I wish I still had a copy of it, it is a chilling read). This template is in use today on a global scale. Used, I might add, by the very protectors of Democracy so idealized by under-developed countries. Of course, nobody will ever stoop to calling it Fascism, and within 100 years, that word may not exist.

Americans had an opportunity, in the last decade, to create a chink in the armor, of this machine. And we didn't take it. Ross Perot, who may not have been a good president, would have at least, thrown a monkey wrench into the cogs of the political machine. But, being the superficial people that we are, we passed on a candidate with a big nose and ears, in favor of a handsome corporate image. We have nobody but ourselves to blame.

Well, now that I've ranted enough, I think I'll have a beer.