This is the personal webhub of Michael F.Nyiri, poet, philosopher, fool, since 1999 052008

Let there be "AllThingsMike"

The purple Haze of jacaranda flowers covers Southern California in the Spring. An abundance of blooms showed up on the weekend of May 10th and I began my photo excursions the next weekend. On May 16th in Long Beach and May 18th in Pasadena, I photographed dozens of the beautifully flowering jacaranda trees and am displaying the photos in the Webshots Folders Purple Pulchritude One (Long Beach) and Purple Pulchritude Two (Pasadena) There is also a selection of the better photos in the May 21st PhotoPost on WhenWordsCollide.

Pirates, buccanneers, wenches, lords, and ladies populate the yearly Southern California Renaissance Faire which occurs in the Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area in Irwindale in the Spring. I went this year on the last day of the Faire, May 18th, and the weather was oppressively hot.

Although I didn't get a lot of varied footage or photos this year, since I left early, I did get almost the complete performances of the Poxy Boggards bawdy men's choral group, and magician, comic and juggler Broon, who put on a good show this year. Both performances will make it to an upcoming MikeVideo internet movie.

One of the Thursday Calendar entertainment choices in the Los Angeles Times was the 2008 edition of the George Barris "Cruisin' Back the Fifties" car show in Culver City. Only a few miles north of L.A., I hauled both cameras up to the show and spent three or four hours taking both photos and video of the various classic custom cars, both from the George Barris studio, and in competition. It was slightly overcast, but the shining paint jobs are still clearly displayed on these beauteous automobiles. The photography was taken on May 10th. The Webshots Folder, "Culver City Kustoms" with 234 photos, was added later that night. The MikeVideo Internet Movie, "Culver City Kustoms" was added to Xanga Video and YouTube on the 12th, making this project one of the fastest to get to the internet in both photo and video versions so soon after planning and shooting. Read the Director's Commentary on WhenWordsCollide.

On May 1st came the Mikester's fifty fifth birthday, and to celebrate, quite a few creative endeavors were started. Planned and shot in mid March, the Silver Lake Steps Project resulted in a couple of Webshots folders. Silver Lake Steps One with 102 images and Silver Lake Steps Two with 160 images added on May 11th. Intrigued with a Los Angeles Times article about the over 50 public staircases in the Los Angeles suburb of Silver Lake, Mike printed out a list from the internet and took both still and video camera up into the hills of Silver Lake looking for staircases. Covered are the famous Music Box Steps, the Cove, Landa, and the Micheltorena steps. There is also internet movie footage incorporated into the eighth edition of Mike's Video Blog, available on both Xanga Video and YouTube. The video blog is 13:03 and takes the viewer along on the hike with Mike, from planning, driving to, and execution of the hike up three famous staircases. Read the Director's Commentary on the blog.

I have only made eight "Mike's Video Blogs" since February of 2006, but each one is lavish, with travel, music, and narration covering a variety of places and events. The most ambitious is Mike's Video Blog #6,"Almost Homeless", which encompasses three separate "chapters" to document the renovation of my rented house, and then the shocking eviction, and eventual redemption which followed.

Shot immediately before a rainstorm on March 16, 2008, the Webshots Folder titled "San Gabriel Mountains" contains 279 high quality images taken with the Sony DSC-W55. The folder was added online on March 22. Backed by magnificent cloudscapes, this trip up into the San Gabriels via Azusa Avenue and down Glendora Mountain Road showcases many thrilling views of the vegetation, landscape, and majesty of the mountain range immediately above the Los Angeles basin.

It is getting difficult to find locations for photo expeditions that are close by. The rising price of gasoline has stymied plans for Northern California and Las Vegas expeditions. With the addition of each new Webshots Gallery folder, at least one or possibly two PhotoPosts are added to the WhenWordsCollide blog. Each PhotoPost also includes written "commentary" on the photos presented, so they serve as mini travelogues taking the viewer along on the expedition with Mike. Video footage is also shot concurrently with the photos, and there was video footage shot in the San Gabriels as well. No plans to use it as yet, but the soothing sights and sounds of one of the mountain streams might make a nice stress relieving video on it's own. View The San Gabriel Mountains PhotoPost ONE and TWO on the blog.

As of late March I've written eight poems so far this year. .As the years pass, I sometimes write a lot, as in 2004, or a scant few, like the only 14. pieces I wrote in 2007. So far, in 2008, even though the output is not great quantity wise, at least it's been consistent. When I post an "ElectricPoetry" post on my blog, WhenWordsCollide, I have attempted to include at least one new piece, and it's been working so far.

Beginning in mid 2007 I posted "10 Best Of" collections of poems on my blog from the decades of the Seventies, the Eighties, and the Nineties. I still have to collect the 10 Best of the Aughts, and before we know it, the Teens will be upon us. It's interesting for me to note that now my last decade's worth of poetry are all "internet poems" written in a computer Notepad program, and posted for the most part online instead of actually existing on a piece of paper, as most of the poems till 1999 were presented at first.

The ElectricPoetry site is constantly being upgraded, and even though I'm a little late getting the 2007 section completed and a 2008 section online, by year's end I do hope to have even better navigation, and some redesign of the older pages and sections to make navigating the site even easier.

There are now three selections in the "My Operations" series I've been posting on my blog WhenWordsCollide since August of 2005's "My Left Hip" about my hip replacement surgery back in 1993. The second selection was "My Colonoscopy" from March 2007and detailed the experience of having the "small invasive procedure." In February 2008 I began serializing "Jawbreaking In High School" about my broken jaw and the many operations it took to correct it. Part Two was added a few days later. Other selections in the series will show up on the blog and can be found on the :"tags" page for my blog under "operations".

The sporadic California rainy season always provides the opportunity to get out and get some cloudscapes. One Friday evening after work, and right before a rainstorm,I was able to capture quite a selection of cloudscapes with the latest 7.2 megapixel camera, and they are online in my Webshots Gallery entitled "Cloudscaping"

Along with the Webshots Gallery, which contains over 100 photos taken that afternoon, right before sundown, I also completed an internet movie called "Cloudscaping"which is essentially a photo slideshow comprised of not only the photos in the latest Cloudscaping folder, but dozens of other cloudscaping photos taken over a four year period, and edited to the strains of traditional guitar music by fellow Xanga blogger Randy Van Otterloo (flatpick46 on Xanga) The video is 6 min. and 21 seconds long. Read the Director's Commentary on WhenWordsCollide.

BIG WEDNESDAY PROJECT 12/07

On Wednesday, the 5th of December, 2007, the biggest swells in over two years were predicted along the shoreline of California. I took a day off work to travel up the coast of California, taking photos and video of the monstrous waves and the collections of surfing aficianados who similarly took the day off work to ride the waves.

Although the conditions were less magnificent than predicted, I was able to cobble together a 12 minute video showing the swells at a number of beaches, and showcasing some interesting surfing footage.The video is located in my Xanga Video Section HERE. You can also read theDirector's Commentary on my blog.

The year 2008 dawned with a major overhaul of the "Yes, But Is It Art? Gallery site on AllThingsMike. On December 29th and 30th,2007, I completed about a half a dozen new composites, including "Santa Monica Pier", a detail of which is onthe lef. Originally created as a "joke site" for the Komedy, Komedy, Komedy page, the Yes, But Is It Art? Gallery went legitimate in 2003, but wasn't really begun in earnest until the next year. The Art Gallery serves as an introduction to my Philosophy of Art, and also contains sections which highlight the "fine arts" in which I have dabbled, including drawing, photography, and computer composites. . Eleven new and recently found composites have been added to the Computer Art section. I have also added forward and back buttons on most of the recent works, for ease of maneuvering through the gallery. There are now 37 individual pages in the Computer Art section, dating back to 2000, when I got the Picture Publisher program and began making "composites", computer collages which first used images and clip art from the web and programs, and now mostly uses my own photography. Besides the refurbishing of the Art Gallery, there are also new USC logos composites featurd HERE on my blogsite, WhenWordsCollide. I finally received a better camera, a Sony Cybershot with 7.2 megapixels, and my first full photo expedition was to my old alma mater. The trip also gave birth to a collection of photos in my Webshots Gallery entitled "USC and Expostion Park".

THE "MIKEMORPH" AND "SKYLINE" MOVIEMORPHS 10-12/07

October 2007 brought the addition of the Morpheus software to my digital bag of tricks, and the first project, which can be seen to the left and in full size HERE, is the "MikeMorph", a series of photographs of me from the age of 5 to the present, at age 54. I have planned to have some sort of morph like this on "AllThingsMike"since I created this website, but haven't found the software I needed till now. The program outputs Flash files, animated gifs, and avi movie files that I can use in my video editing software for more varied effects. The second moviemorph is "Skyline", which clocks in at 3 minutes and 40 seconds, and presents a series of city skylines morphing from one to the other in front of a background of time lapse cloud photography culled from the internet. . Plans for more upcoming "MovieMorphs" include "DinoMorph", morphing a series of dinosaurs. I have also begun an internet movie incorporating the "MikeMorph" footage.

As I find new programs and can incorporate their use into my "electronic experiment in art", the only thing holding back my creativitiy is the time it takes to learn the programs and to execute the creations themselves. 2007 has seen a burst of moviemaking creativity, and the morphing program will ultimately be used to enhance my internet movies as well as come up with some interesting art projects on it's own.