Driving Crazy in Sardinia (Guidando Pazzo in Sardegna)

It was mid-afternoon at the airport in Olbia, Sardegna. Rushing around trying to get a car rental because although the island looks small compared to the whole European mainland, it is huge and mountainous.


The desk clerk lady said 'blah blah blah... but we only have manual transmission left'. Do you know the film scenes where the back ground seems to rush away because of camera focus tricks? Well that was what happened. And when they said the car was a Fiat it happened again because, J-Lo's advertisements in the US aside, I had heard bad things about these vehicles.





After finding the silver Fiat Punto among the other vehicles along the row, I did the usual 'walk around' to make sure there was no damage. Just a few scratches and someone had removed the letter 'N' badge on the back, leaving 'PU TO'. Damn good thing I wasn't going to be driving anywhere that people knew Spanish...


The last time I had tried to drive a manual transmission car was before college when some friends were alcohol-comatose. I remembered it as an unpleasant lurching experience with too many pedals on the floor. So, resolved to my fate, I stowed luggage and started reading the manual there in the parking lot for tips and tricks on the finer points of driving manual.

Armed with sufficient knowledge like Neo in 'The Matrix', I started the car up and managed to get it switched to reverse gear. The clutch / brake confusion made backing up a weird mix of terror about hitting parked cars behind me and impatience because I was doing everything in slow motion.

I spent 40 minutes that afternoon driving around the rent car parking lot, turning, shifting from first to second, parking, reverse, avoiding people walking around, backing out again. People were really beginning to stare, so with utmost confidence in my newly aquired abilities, I decided to leave the warm nest of the rental car parking lot like a baby bird and make my way in the cruel world.

Not one minute after leaving the parking lot towards the highway I needed, I noticed that I had a police escort (they had probably seen me practicing in the parking lot and were making sure I wasn't drunk, or Scottish). Through the first roundabout (thank god I didn't have to yield), they must have decided that I wasn't going to kill anyone and went off on their way.

Driving on the open highways towards Baja Sardegna where I was staying was great, I really enjoyed the manual transmission feel of the road. My Garmin maps were a bit miscalibrated though, so when I arrived close to my hotel it indicated that I should go down a dirt road. The road kept getting smaller and smaller with brush closing in on the sides of the car.

I got out and hiked over the large stony hill for a while and found someone who pointed me in the right direction. So, I backed up the several hundred meters, really starting to understand the car so I thought.

At the beach hotel on the mountainous hill, I parked on a large slope. Not fully understanding the inner workings of manual transmission vehicles when starting from a parallel park situation on a slope I was in for some real fun the next day. Let's just say, any accidents that may have occurred left no marks (on my car or anyone else's), again probably because everything was occurring so slowly.

The next day a nice day trip to La Madelena (Trinity Beach) was on the itinerary, and a few times I had stalled out while yielding on the roundabouts with impatient people behind me. A few angry looks and honks at me were the worst things I had to deal with luckily. For the most part, in this difficult mountainous terrain I had conquered something which I was always nervous to try. I can drive manual.











One thing about the Fiat rent car though, it was equiped with a bizarre feature. Coming back from the beach to a parking lot in Palau, I started up and noticed that the steering was super difficult and was worried that I had a car problem.

The municipal police came out of nowhere (must have been watching an obvious stranger) and offered to call the car rental place for me, but then one of the officers thought about it and pushed a button on the dashboard that turned back on the steering. HUH??!!? There was a button that TURNS OFF YOUR POWER STEERING on this car? Why stop there, why not have a button that maybe jettisons all of your fuel, or makes the wheels fall off? I thanked the officers in what I was sure at the time was perfect Italian, and made my way back to Baja Sardegna in the dark.

A Good Head for Mosaics (Testa Robusta per Mosaico)

Hmmm, I can really think of no finer way to welcome you guys back after an excessively long blogging hiatus than to bore you all with a tale of woe and accompanying vacation photos. I've been super busy with my real job, artworks, and my oldmosaics.com (I'm trying my hand writing phone apps believe it or not). Don't laugh if you look at my website yet, it's very much a work in progress. Now here's your popcorn, and the story begins...


In September while boarding the train from FCO airport in Rome to the center of the city after a long flight from Dallas, I noticed that the overhead luggage rack for my suitcase was missing several crossbar supports, creating a large hole. Because there were not many places left in the car, I carefully wedged my suitcase up on the edge rails and the few bars that were actually there. Sitting down directly underneath the hole area (so no one else might accidently get struck with a falling suitcase), I resolved to keep an eye on it and be ready with quick hands to grab if it were to fall.

Unfortunately for me, a nice lady and her mid-twenties attractive daughter sat down next to me and we all struck up a conversation. Gravity took its course, and that coupled with my lack of baggage-related attention resulted in a surprise crushing blow to the forehead. At the time, I was thinking 'That's odd, my whole head moved back because of this crushing blow.' I still smile when I think of hearing all the normally reserved Italians in the train car simultaneously gasp at the horrific site. I laughed it off but I was worried about the possibilities of concussion because people in the street on the way to my hotel were saying things like 'cattivo bruschi' and such.

So, I resolved to just stay awake after putting my bag away at my hotel and took the train from Pyramide to Ostia Antica (which in all honesty, I was planning to do anyway). I had been to Pompeii and other archaeological sites around Europe, but had never made the time for this super close one even though I'd been to Rome several times.











I only had a day to cover so much ground, so I ran. I ran like Forrest Gump that day until there were enormous blisters on my little toes in spite of my comfortable hiking boots.











Ostia Antica was a treasure hunt maze of in-situ mosaics! The archaeological area covers a few square miles with so many uncovered and partially buried insulae, or city block areas with houses and shops.

Mosaics were not just reserved for the numerous public areas like baths and forums (the ancient equivalents of water parks and shopping malls, I guess), but many obscure ones were to be found in various houses scattered across the large archaeological area.











Below is an obscure mosaic from a small shop in the western part of the city. I think these look like leather working tools from the time, or maybe just meat tenderizing? It’s fun for me to try to understand what the artists were thinking back then when they placed the tesserae. That’s one of the reasons I like the ancient works so much because you can see the brush strokes in an ancient fresco or the choices about andamento from thousands of years ago and it’s like you are standing there right behind the artist from a different time, understanding how life was or how it was imagined.











I'm happy to report many of the mosaics were geometric in nature. I've been on a geometric mosaic kick lately with my triclinium background and it was great to see through the eyes of long gone artisans. Some of these forms were not covered in the usual mosaic history books.
Here’s what I’ve been calling a ‘sparse flower geometric’ from a house in the far north part of the site.












Check out the ‘meander-lozenge combo bordered by other meander and guilloche’ that can be seen near the entrance…












And below is a captivating but simple geometric from a home in the southwestern part of Ostia.











Occasionally, the driven visitor is rewarded with a random sectile work. The pavement below was especially interesting to me because of the ‘reused’ pieces of border carved marble in some of the triangle pieces (easy to see above the numidian yellow square at lower left).












The owner of this villa within the city must have been keen on the army because of all the shields?












Most of the mosaics left within ancient Ostia are monochrome, but even without colored tesserae, there is a world of information locked into these stone relics.
Here is the map of the area. The far reaches of Regione III and Regione I have some ‘off the normal path’ semi buried mosaics in hard to reach houses because of the overgrown brush, etc.












Speaking of semi-buried, sometimes the archaeological superintendents will place big mats covered with sand over some of the endangered and more important mosaics to help preserve them. Maybe I could have bribed some of these hard working archaeologists restoring a pavement near the Capitolinum monument to lift off one of the covers? Well, I did put some money in their tip jar.












In my opinion, Ostia is an underrated site for mosaics and is a wonderful mirror to the past and being an armchair archaeologist, I’m very glad to have visited.
Probably the best source of information if you are interested in visiting Ostia Antica is Ostia-antica.org.

Italy 2011 - A Few Photos (Un Po' Foto di Italia)

Step right up and guess the name of the famous actress whose visage I've attempted to render in the ancient art of origam... uh I mean, mosaic!
Below is the result of my portraiture class with Luciana Notturni in
Ravenna, Italy, which is always a great time.


















This time in Venice, I happened to stay during the 'Historical Regatta' right on the Grand Canal. Drinking wine and waving back to the race boats and looking out on all the plebs crowded in to seats at the Rialto market allows one to catch a glimpse from the vantage point of royalty, if only for a moment. Maybe it was more because the Count Francesco di Mosto's place was right next door?










In addition to the obligatory wine touring, Florence this time involved an awesome cooking school excursion called 'In Tavola' just on the south side of the Arno river. You go into the industrial kitchen with 20 or so people. Working on stainless tops, 5 professional chefs and a blur of cleanup people assist you in prepping a multi course meal. Then they throw it it the oven while you go down to the wine cellar and have some liquid refreshments. Then BAM, you're served! That is, food is served, not like someone showed you how to do something that you are bad at, or a lawsuit or something.

In Rome this time, I stayed in a great apartment (Palazzo Velabro) immediately adjacent to the world's oldest sewer, the Cloaca Maxima. It didn't smell bad though even though it was uncovered. The Quadraporte monument and various temples were super close. I probably could have spit watermelon seeds from the apartment into the surprised mouth of the famous Bocca di Verita because of the proximity. But, who would do that really? Watermelon tastes terrible.


I'll tell you all about Sardegna later, but let's have some guesses on that mosaic up there.

Meeting A Blogger! (Incontrato i Blogger Fantastico)

It was very hot, not 'Dallas hot', but incredibly humid. It was the kind of humid which causes sweat to drip from your nose and wonder which it is that you are breathing, air or water. I had just arrived on the train and was making my way across the Italian town with my 60kg of luggage, sun beating down, trying to keep one eye on my outdated GPS in order to keep my wrong turns to a minimum.

Under normal circumstances, this would cause me to run to the nearest air conditioned room and order a cold drink. But, I was very excited that I was on my way to meet a blogger that I've admired for a long time. She has a fantastic eye for design, a respect and deep knowledge of western history, and is a true original in my opinion. You have probably guessed by now that it was Maggie from 'Mosaicology' who I was going to visit.

It probably sounds strange, but I had never met an actual blogger until then, so I was a bit nervous.

Luckily, I arrived early in front of the church agreed upon. Even more luckily, the bar in front of the church had outdoor seating and would sell cold water and wine to me. They never give enough wine in the church. :)

The bells struck the time and there was only one lady with family members meeting the description out there. She was looking around as if waiting for someone, but no, it was not her.

A while after the last echo of the bells were gone, I was relieved to see them appear. I waved them over to the outdoor bar. In a short moment we were all sitting there as old friends, discussing art and design, history, politics, and everything and nothing. They are such precious people to me, and we had only just met in person!

Time flew by as we talked and then sadly it was time for me to catch my next train to the Venice area. But, we have plans to draw up jewelry pieces using rare stones, and I can't wait.

I just returned home a few hours ago after so long on the airplanes, so now I will sleep for a few days...

p.s. - A., grazie per l'auto alla stazione!

Squirrel spirits and the Past (Storia con Scoiattoli)

All of you, gather around the evening fire, and hear the story of 'Pale Face Walks With Stones'. It was a summer ugonawa, oh, I should say 'hot'. It was after many days until the ground cracked and the grass died. The mighty rivers turned dry and the swimming pool was down a good two inches a day.

Well 'Walks with Stones' was outside cleaning up stone pieces of many colors, colors like maize in the harvest, when he looked up and saw annoying squirrel spirit. Squirrel was climbing on the house and then on the fence, and had just previously caused much anger in 'Walks with Stones'. So, he leans down to grab a small stone from a pile of dirt recently displaced from planting a mighty tree. 'Walks with Stones' had the intention of scaring Squirrel Spirit off the damned fence and onto the open front yard plain stretching for blocks as far as the eye could see.

















But he paused before casting the stone at Squirel Spirit. He thought it would be a pity to cast this weird randomly picked up stone at the squirrel. A pity mostly because it had strange markings, and wasn't an actual stone at all. It turns out that 'Walks with Stones' had inadvertently picked up a piece of prehistoric pottery with very linear brush marks, and an inner core more red and ceramic-ish than the outer encrusted face and back.


















Shaking a fist at Squirrel Spirit, he excitedly looked up the archaeology department at the big university on his talking box from Motorola. Then as the call was dialed 'Walks with Stones' looks to the mighty west tree and sees the evil crow spirit (about 100 of them) looking at him. Then he utters a word and they all take flight as the 'dial' button is pressed. 'Walks with Stones' is creeped right the hell out, mostly because in the years living in the Dallas area, he has not had this vision except once before.


Anyhow, I'm sure there will be an update when the scientists at the University of Texas Archaeology field office come back with details.

The News (Notizie)

Hello Blogchums!

What's been going on, you might ask? I reckon a few things, work is always a factor, but there are many moving parts to this 'macchina' called life.

My brother drilled his first oil well, bravo. Production is a little light at around 20 barrels per day, but well done regardless! He's diving that big reef off of Australia at the moment and has plans for many more in the near future.

















My sister *still* hasn't found a job (she's 27 and lives with my mother). But, she makes good vegetarian food and smokes cigarettes more adeptly than most people I know.

As for me, I've been keeping up with my regimen of liking cookies, sculpture, mosaics, macro economics, archaeometry, reading your blogs, encryption, and ancient history. Note my use of the Oxford comma, which is a lifestyle choice much like the proper way of putting the toilet paper in which the end rests over the roll instead of under, the latter probably being the exclusive purview of of dog thieves, insurance salesmen, and Nazis.

This autumn, I'm heading to Italy to take another advanced mosaic class in Ravenna. This is brought on mostly by my desire to make the mosaic centerpiece I have planned outside appear better than stick figures. My enormous white marble deck is progressing slowly because of my other work, but I'd like to think it will be finished some day.

















Also on the to-do list while in Italy is to visit the ancient island of Sardinia. I hope that they have the kind in olive oil and not just mustard or something gross like that. Kidding, everyone knows sardines are exclusively from Norway which is what you purchase in excessive quantity when you go there...













Lately, I've purchased some art by people whose technical abilities I admire. Andjelka in Serbia sold me her eye, well, not her real eye. Just an incredibly well rendered example of how mosaics should be. But now, I am busy fabricating a custom frame for it.


I hope that you all are having a great summer so far!

Keys (Tasti vecchio)

In media and life, I've seen a coincidental confluence in the past few months of keys, both the physical kind that you might open a lock with and more abstract kinds. My brother misplaced his car keys, I generated an encryption keyset for a business client, then took a quick try at decrypting a note (published by the FBI) that was found in a dead guy's pocket (I was not successful, hah). The acting mayor of Dallas got into trouble for giving Michael Vick the 'key to the city' which I cartoonishly imagine as an enormous gilded key with a big 'D' on the end. But, I've never seen it and really think it's probably just a disappointing piece of paper with 'Key advice' on it. I guess there hasn't been anything in the news about Panama or the canal (also having locks). What kind of locks am I forgetting?

To take us in what I'm sure is a completely unexpected direction... the Romans made physical keys out of bronze and improved the Egyptian designs by replacing wooden components with metals. Of course, I guess if the Romans made keys out of cotton candy, there wouldn't be much evidence of it now... Keys and locks made in the shops back then were pretty much unique works of art as they didn't have ANSI standards back then.

Here is a photo I took in Arles, France a few years back of keys found in that area.















Also, from Aqueilia Italy, a relief sculpture of a Roman locksmith's grave showing him at work.












The ancients also had the abstract notion of logical keys (and encryption). The historian Suetonius wrote of an ancient shift cypher that Julius Caeser used to encrypt messages. The idea was just to replace an alphabetic letter with another letter farther down the alphabetical sequence. Thousands of years ago, it was good enough to guard important state secrets. Now comically, the acronym for the encryption is 'ROT-n', (rotten, as in 'not good' hehe).

Anyway, puns aside, the best encryption schemes I've seen involve combinations of modulus functions (remainders) which accomplishes compression and encryption at the same time, but for prearranged lengths of data in the overall stream to be encrypted.

If I needed to encrypt something, I'd be too paranoid to use RSABase because it's prime number based, and I think NSA has skeleton key for that (decrypts all).
It's probably best to do your own cryptography from scratch and only share it with those you want to receive your message.

For good reading on keys and locks in ancient times, check out romanlocks.com