multifarious mushrooms

The roslyn oxley9 gallery sent out a media release on the 23 May, 2008 saying the following:

Statement on behalf of Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery and Bill Henson

After much consideration we have decided to withdraw a number of works from the current Bill Henson exhibition that have attracted controversy. The current show, without the said works, will be re-opened for viewing in coming days.

Bill Henson is one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists and is internationally respected. His works are held in every leading art institution in Australia and are included in the collections of a number of the world’s most prestigious art museums. The Art Gallery of New South Wales and the National Gallery of Victoria have both recently held a retrospective of 30 years of the artist’s work.

Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery will remain closed while the current exhibition is re-hung.

Someone had complained to the police and the Vice Squad removed the photographs on the grounds that the photos were pornographic.

Since then, controversy has raged on TV, in newspapers and on radio in Australia.

I must stress here that I have not seen these photos before they were removed. I have only seen what Google, TV and newspapers have shown.

What are the photos? They are nude photos of 12 to 13 girls and boys. The photography is, in my opinion, very artistic. Shadows are used to show what the artist says he intends. To evoke the vulnerability and fragility of that stage of adolescence. Coming from the light to the dark or vice versa. The shadows also act to cover most of the sexual parts of the bodies, although not all. I don’t know if that was the photographer’s intention. Also, the pose often hides breasts and pubic areas with the use of limbs. Bill Henson has been showing such photos around the world and in Australia for many years. He says this stage of life fascinates him. He also takes many other photos of subjects not so controversial.

Recently, the Australian Government held a Twenty 20 summit including the experts in all fields of life’s endeavours. Many ideas were floated and presented. It was seen to be a success. But the Creative stream of the conference, headed by Cate Blanchette, released their statement saying that this was censorship of art.

Now, I don’t think it is censorship of art until the matter has been through the courts. If the works are said to be pornographic (which I don’t think) then the gallery and the artist has committed a crime and the works should not be shown. It has not been the Censorship Board which has made these decisions.

What bothers me most is that a girl or boy of that age is not in a psychological or emotional state to be able to give informed consent to being models for the photographer. Of course their parents gave consent. But is that right? I don’t think I would.

The photographer is now 52 and therefore in a position of power during photo shootings. I’m not at all suggesting that the young people were not safe in this environment. The photos portray the youths as almost asexual really. Now I don’t know what control the parents or youths have after giving consent to the photo shoot. Do they have control of the finished shot? Presumably this would have to be the photographer’s decision.

I know nudes of all ages have been portrayed in art. But in photos? And in these times of hypersensitivity to pedophiles and child sexual abuse and exploitation? Of course there are the really sexualized images of young girls in advertisements but these girls are clothed. I hate it, but I wouldn’t censor it.

I don’t think these Henson photos are sexualized. But it still disturbs me.

Well, the matter is in the hands of the police now, so I guess not much more can be said, except that Henson so far will not talk to police on his lawyer’s advice and he will not name the model or her parents and he will not say when the photos were taken.

But I’m interested in your view. I cannot show any images here. They are copyrighted. But you can do a google search for them. Many galleries do not allow viewing of larger images however.

As of June 6 2008, no charges are being brought. The Classification Board also classified the works as PG.

Bravenet started out as a very small company offering tons of free scripts and tools. They must have made money to employ more people through their ads. Now they are both a site with a huge number of free web master tools and they have just gone into hosting, as you will see on the right of this post.

I am thinking of some of you from blogger.com. Both the blogger and word press platforms are free but wordpress.org requires you to be self hosted. I’d have to say that this allows for far more flexibilty. I have to admit that when I look at a blogger site, I think this is not as professional as it could be, even though I have one myself on Tennis

You would be able to use your hosted word press for other things too like an ordinary web site and forum.

Now Bravenet has just posted how to upload to your host (them). Here is what they say:

So you have created your website and are ready to put it on the internet for the whole world to see. Not sure how to do this? Then keep reading!

Here at Bravenet we provide you with a few different ways to get your website online: file manager, FTP Java Applet and FTP.

Bravenet File Manager - File Upload

If you have large number of files to upload I suggest trying one of the other two methods below. The ‘Upload File’ link found in the top right of your file manager comes in handy when you only have a few files to upload. By all means you can upload as many files as you want – it just may take some time.

After you log into Bravenet, select your website and click file manager and you are now in the root of your website (root being: yourwebsite.com or yourwebsite.bravehost.com). If you were to upload your file from here it would be placed in your root – yourwebsite.com/yourfile.html or yourwebsite.bravehost.com/yourfile.html.

If you wish to put your file into a new folder you can click the ‘Make Directory’ link. Next, name your folder and it will then appear in your file list. If you click that folder (to go into it) and then upload a file it will upload into that folder (yourwebsite.com/yourfolder/yourfile.html or yourwebsite.bravehost.com/yourfolder/yourfile.html).

By default there are four upload boxes in the ‘File Upload’ window; you can add more by clicking the ‘new file upload box’ button. And then upload your files by clicking ‘uploading files.’

In the Bravenet File Manager you can also edit, rename and delete files. This comes in very handy if you just want to make a small change or delete a single file.

Bravenet Java FTP Applet

You can connect to the FTP Applet from a few different places. The easiest is to click the ‘ftp’ tab at the top and then click the icon under the title ‘FTP Applet.’ If you have more than one FTP account simply select the one you wish to use. The FTP Applet always starts by asking you for your password. Once it has loaded, double click the ‘web’ folder. You will then be provided with a list of your website(s) – select the website you wish to upload to by double clicking.

On the left side you will see a pane that says ‘Your Computer’. There you can browse through all of the files currently on your computer. To the right there is another pane called ‘Web Server’ (your website).

To upload a file to your site:

1. Find the file(s) that you wish to upload on your computer by using the ‘Your Computer’ pane.
2. If you want to upload the file(s) to a certain location on your website (ie. a folder called images) make sure you have opened that folder by doubling clicking it in your ‘Web Server’ pane.
3. Select the file(s) (click to highlight them).
4. Click on the upload arrow (arrow pointing to the right).

You can upload more than one file at a time by holding down your shift key. You can also upload an entire folder by just clicking the folder name – the FTP Applet will upload the folder and everything in it. To create a new folder you can click the ‘New Folder’ icon in the top right of your ‘Web Server’ pane.

FTP

You can also connect to Bravenet with any third party FTP program of your choice. You can obtain all your FTP information under the ‘ftp’ tab. You will need to know your username (it is different than your Bravenet one, so double check!), your password and your server/hostname. Again this is found on your ‘ftp’ tab after logging into Bravenet. How and where you enter this information is going to depend on the program you have chosen. Most FTP programs behave similarly to our Java FTP Applet.

If you are having problems with FTP I suggest checking our knowledge base or Jenny’s tutorial on FTP for help. Because there are so many FTP programs out there and they all vary it is impossible to give you instructions for every program. Check the program itself or program website for any help files if you are having troubles getting connected.

Recommendations: More than 8 files, or files that are more than 10 MB, use the FTP applet. More than 100 files (for example a complicated PHP application), or more than 100MB use a 3rd party FTP program.

Of course if you use wordpress for hosting you would not need to use FTP.

weblog tools collection

What first strikes you about this blog is that it has many very nice templates for wordpress blogs.

It also has an extensive collection of resource links to useful blog enhancements such as widgets and plugins.

I came across this site when I wanted a web site screen shot utility.

Here’s what else Nirsoft has.

* Password Recovery Utilities
o MessenPass - Recover the passwords of instant messenger programs: Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, Trillian, and more…
o Mail PassView - Recover the passwords of popular email clients: Outlook Express, MS Outlook, Eudora, Mozilla Thunderbird , and more…
o Protected Storage PassView - Displays all passwords and AutoComplete strings stored in your Protected Storage.
o Dialupass: Dialup Password Recovery - Recovers the passwords of dialup entries (VPN and Internet connections). Works also under Windows 2000/XP.
o Asterisk Logger - Reveal the passwords hidden behind asterisk (’****’) characters in standard password text-boxes.
o SniffPass - Password Sniffer - Listen to your network, and capture POP3, IMAP4, SMTP, FTP, and HTTP (basic authentication) passwords
o Network Password Recovery - Freeware utility that recovers the network passwords stored by Windows XP.
o PstPassword - Recover the password of Outlook PST file.
* Network Monitoring Tools
o SmartSniff: TCP/IP Sniffer - Capture TCP/IP packets on your network adapter and view the captured data as sequence of conversations between clients and servers.
o CurrPorts: TCP/IP Connections Viewer - Freeware tool that displays the list of all currently opened TCP and UDP ports on your local computer.
o AdapterWatch - displays useful information about your network adapters: IP addresses, Hardware address, WINS servers, DNS servers, MTU value, Number of bytes received or sent, The current transfer speed, and more…
* Internet Related Utilities
o IPNetInfo - Find all available information about an IP address: The owner of the IP address, the country/state name, IP addresses range, contact information (address, phone, fax, and email), and more.
o IECookiesView: Cookies Viewer/Manager for IE - View/Delete/Modify the cookies that Internet Explorer stores on your computer.
o IEHistoryView - View/Delete the URLs that you visited in the last few days.
o HTMLAsText (HTML To Text Converter) - Freeware utility that converts HTML files to text files.
o WhoisThisDomain - Get information about a registered domain.
o SiteShoter - Take a screenshot of a Web site.
o WebVideoCap - Capture Flash video (.flv) and RTSP/MMS streams from Video Web sites.
* Command-Line Utilities
o NirCmd: Freeware Command-Line Tool - Do some useful tasks from command-line: turn off your monitor, turn off the computer, open/close the door of your cd-rom drive, dial to VPN/Internet connection, change your display settings, and much more !!
* Desktop Utilities
o Volumouse - Control the sound volume with your wheel mouse !!
o MyUninstaller - Alternative to the standard Add/Remove applet of Windows operating system.
o NirExt - Change the icon of any folder in your file system, Easily create shortcuts on your start-menu/desktop.
* Freeware System Tools
o ProduKey - Recover Office/Windows CD-Key
o RegScanner (Registry Scanner) - Scan and find values in the Registry.
o ShellExView - Displays the details of shell extensions installed on your computer, and allows you to easily disable and enable each shell extension.
o SysExporter - Grab the data stored in standard list-views, list boxes, and combo boxes from almost any application running on your system, and export it to text, HTML or XML file.
o OpenedFilesView - View opened/locked files in your system.
o ActiveXHelper - View essential information about ActiveX components installed on your computer, and allows you to disable/enable specific ActiveX components.
o OfficeIns - Microsoft Office Add-Ins Manager
o WinUpdatesList - Displays the list of all Windows updates (Service Packs and Hotfixes) installed on your local computer.

Here is what SiteShoter can do:

Not a terrific job in my view.

I didn’t think much about turning 60, thinking, oh it’s just another day. But it turned out not to be. I didn’t want a party, because I sure wasn’t having any speeches and besides I’d had one when I turned 50.

So I didn’t tell a whole lot of people that it was my birthday and that I was turning 60. So they forgot. Miserable day really. I’d organised for a couple of friends to come over for the afternoon and one of them was sick.

Then on the next night my partner had organised for a dinner out with my family. That was fun.

The following night, my son and his girlfriend came and cooked dinner and gave me an hour’s massage on a proper massage table. That was fun too. Although massages tend to allow a few feelings to surface. My feelings were for all those people I had loved and now missed because they had died.

And the next day some other family came over with presents.

Tonight, I decided that I was going to a gym for the first time in my life. So I did. I just paid a casual rate and a very nice woman who felt sorry for me, just charged me $6 for me to go into the gym and I could have had a swim too if I’d had my bathers.

Well, I got onto the walking and running machine and set it really low and then higher and higher. I walked a kilometre. That was the easiest walk I’ve ever done. There’s no dog pulling you on the lead, no bad weather and it is much easier on the feet.

Then I tried the step machine. I couldn’t get it going properly. I was right down the bottom before I realised that you let the steps up and push them down from the top. I don’t know how many steps I did but it showed how many calories I’d burned.

I was starting to worry that my heart beat might be getting too high because I didn’t know what it should be for my age. In fact for 60, it is 160, but you should only do 85% of that consistently. That is 136. In fact I was nowhere near that, so next time I can go a bit harder. I know my heart beat is much higher just doing housework.

I tried the bike next. Once again I did that to the point I thought my heart beat was going strong enough for a first go. I could see how many calories I’d burned too.

Guess what! I loved it. I can see why people get addicted to it.

There is a program for over 50’s which is cheaper but still expensive to join the gym. But with this I can attend exercise classes and gym classes and swim as often as I want to plus there is a social walking group.

I think I’ll join. It really isn’t hard. You can watch everyone else and listen to music on an ipod if you want. I didn’t feel inadequate. Everyone was concentrating on their own programs. I didn’t think anyone was perving at me. I felt very comfortable. I really recommend it.

So that’s my new after 60 life style change.