Art by Fuzzy

Pottery, Photography, Design - Brandon "Fuzzy" Schwartz

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Back From a 2 Month Hiatus

Well, it’s been almost 2 months since I’ve even looked at my website.  I’ve had some news items to share but apparently not enough time to share them.  Not a lot has happened in the studio since my last update but plenty has been happening in the “real world”.  Track season came and went.  My team finished 7-2 on the season and we ended up 4th at the conference meet.  I finished my class at IUSB.  I finished my duties as a Reading Recovery teacher for the year and completed all my paperwork.  I began another season of grass mowing and other yard work.  I spent some time on the Internet studying fantasy baseball stats and getting used to Firefox.  I finished the yearbook at school and worked on the Black Lab website and finished a few minor graphic design jobs.  Now I have to finish my required technology days before summer break officially begins.  Then I’ll have to take another class at IUSB.  In the near future I hope to get back into the clay studio on a regular basis.  Today I worked on my trimming chuck.  Tomorrow I hope to finish it and get some clay ready to throw.

Now I’m sitting here at the old computer that I’ve pieced together.  It started as my original college computer (2000 AD) so it’s far from top-of-the-line.  I added some RAM, bought an LCD monitor and laser mouse while browsing garage sales and bought another Linksys USB adapter from ebay.  I decided Windows ME wasn’t what I wanted so I installed Ubuntu 8.10 and even got it onto the wireless network here at home (mostly by pure luck?).  Now I can surf the net while my wife is “doing research” which looks suspiciously similar to finding coupons on the Internet.  Ubuntu has run smoothly so far considering the ancientness of my machine but I haven’t exactly been editing video or playing the latest video game.  I plan to get a little more experience with Ubuntu and the world of Linux and the universe of Open Source software this summer.  First step: figuring out how to use my printer without unplugging it from the main computer and plugging it in here.  Second step: downloading and installing some of the 304 updates that the little red arrow says are available.  I better get busy…

I Love Free Stuff

The previous two posts were created using Open Source software almost exclusively.  I have always loved the idea of Open Source, not only because most of it is free as in “no cost” but free as in “anyone can contribute or make changes”.  There are plenty of websites that can give a better description of Open Source so go see for yourself.

There are even entire Open Source operating systems.  A while ago I installed OpenSuse 10.3 (a version of Linux) on an old computer so I could see what it was all about.  I’ve been pretty impressed.  I have slowly found and installed all kinds of useful free software including GIMP (a pretty advanced image editor), and Open Office 3.0 (an entire office suite comparable to Microsoft Office.)  I edited the images in the two previous posts with GIMP and typed most of the Nov. 6th post in Open Office Writer and then brought it all to school on my flash drive.  I’m still experimenting but I have found many great programs and all of them have fit my “budget” just fine…  And there are plenty of Open Source programs for Windows and Mac users as well.  Find some Open Source software at SourceForge.

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