Are you one of those people who has considered buying my book, but then noticed the price tag and thought, “Okay, well… I don’t like Charlie THAT much.” If so, then I have good news for you. The eBook version of Open Range: From Monument Valley to the Mojave Desert is now available for $4.99! You can download the entire book in .epub format and view it using iBooks on your Apple iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch.

The eBook is an exact, page-for-page copy of the printed version. The only difference is some of the fonts that were used in the book have been changed, due to the restrictions of the iBooks format. Also, due to some panorama photographs that occupy a 2-page spread, you may only view the iBook version in horizontal (landscape) orientation (trust me, it’s better this way).

To get the book, follow these instructions:

1. Go to http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2868673 or click the “Buy This Book” Shopping Cart icon in the preview window above (requires Flash).
2. Select “ebook download for Apple iBooks” from the list of available formats and click “Add to Cart.”
3. At this point, you’ll need to log-in or create a Blurb.com user account. I guarantee they will not send you spam.
4. Complete the rest of the checkout process.
5. There are a few different ways you can download the book, depending on what type of device you have. Either way, it’s super easy and painless. Click here for easy instructions on how to download the book for your device.

In the future, I hope to release a Kindle version of the book, as well. I’ve also considered a “second edition” of Open Range that has more written content and elaborates on my experience making it, with comments on some of the more notable images in the book. And then of course I will be releasing many more eBooks in the future and they will continue to grow more ambitious and exciting and I hope that you will love them and enjoy them and tell all of your friends about them.

Thanks for supporting an Artist!

Octoskull is a new character I’ve been experimenting with in my art. He is the amalgamation of a vampiric skull and an octopus, and will definitely be making more appearances in my art. You can also find this drawing on my Society6 and deviantART pages.

India ink with dip pen and brush on paper, 8″ x 11″, 2012. Click to enlarge (takes a second or two to load).

It’s a great feeling when you ask Code Academy instructor Jeff Cohen a question and his response begins with, “That’s a good question.” Having completed 5 weeks of Ruby and Ruby on Rails instruction, I’m now at the point where I feel confident in my ability to ask logical, educated questions in class. If by the end of Week 3 I was barely learning to crawl, then I now feel ready to stand and walk.

Here’s the 3 biggest things going on in my code world right now:

Ruby, JavaScript, and the O’Reilly books

In addition to everything I’m learning at Code Academy, I’ve been wanting to learn JavaScript, too. A few people recommended I look into O’Reilly Media’s JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford, so I bought a copy and started to work through the first couple chapters. Unfortunately, I started to feel a bit confused and was worried that trying to learn JS at the same time as Ruby might not be such a good idea after all.

I expressed these concerns to both my instructor and my CA mentor and they both said that I should probably try to get really good with Ruby before I launch into yet another programming language. So, I ended up buying another O’Reilly book to help me solidify my knowledge of Ruby: The Ruby Programming Language by David Flanagan & Yukihiro Matsumoto (with drawings by why the lucky stiff).

So far, the book has been a great supplement to my Code Academy education and I hope to launch back into JavaScript before too long. My understanding is that Jeff Cohen will also be covering a certain amount of jQuery in-class, so that should help me pick it up a bit faster.

Pair note-taking

In my last Code Academy blog post, I mentioned that I wasn’t crazy about having to take notes with another person (i.e.: 2 people with 2 keyboards connected to 1 computer taking notes on a shared Google doc); my primary reasoning being that note taking can be a sort-of personal thing, where two people may have very different ways of remembering things.

Well, I’m happy to report that my opinion on this matter has changed! During Week 4, I paired up with Jimmy Odom and I can honestly say I came away with more detailed and thorough notes than I would’ve taken by myself. I also feel like taking notes with another person forces me to type things out more clearly and completely, which means they’ll ultimately be easier to understand later on.

My App

For those who don’t know, one of the biggest components of Code Academy is your final project; an original, web-based application that could, in theory, grow into an actual business. Students who enter Code Academy are encouraged to have at least some idea of what kind of app they want to build for their final project. You’re not necessarily tied to that initial idea though, and I’m told that many students will change and restart their idea numerous times throughout the 12-week course.

The idea I came into the class with was to create a more social version of the Internet Movie Database; something where the individuals responsible for marketing a film could actually take control of their film’s database listing and use it as a way to post news and updates about the film’s production and release progress (ergo, the site would have catered only to new films). However, I’ve decided that—between Fandango, Flixster, The Auteurs, and others—there are simply too many of these sites already for mine to be noticed (or, for that matter, needed).

I do, however, have a brand new idea—a much better idea. It’s not going to be the next Facebook or anything, but I can honestly say that I haven’t been able to find anything like it. All I can say for now is that it will focus specifically on a need of the art community that is not currently being addressed by other social art communities like deviantART or Society6.

In June 2011, I traveled to the American Southwest and explored many of the notable deserts and parks around the Navajo Nation & Four Corners area. My photography from this excursion was then collected into my first, self-published book, Open Range: From Monument Valley to the Mojave Desert.

I used several different cameras for this project, but the work that I was most pleased with were my 35mm film photographs. For these particular images, I used Ilford Delta 100 film on a Canon EOS Rebel X with a 50mm EF f/1.8 lens. The film was developed by Central Camera Company in Chicago and then scanned into my computer using a Canon CanoScan 8800F.

Here are 3 of the best shots that I got from the Monument Valley region. You can find all these and more by in my book sold on Blurb.com. Click each image to enlarge (it may take a second to load).

I love this last photo because you can almost see a skull face in that one rock formation.

Quanah Parker was the last chief of the Comanche Indians and the last leader of the Quahadi band who were one of the last groups of Native Americans to surrender (in 1875). Quanah was the son of a Comanche man and a European woman. His life story is told in the book Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S. C. Gwynne.

India ink with dip pen on paper, 8″ x 11″, 2012

I’ve also posted this piece to my deviantART and Society6 pages.

Last week, I posted a video of my cousin and I performing a cover of Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box” at his house in Delaware. Here’s another one of us doing Weezer’s “Undone (The Sweater Song),” except this time with me on drums. Prior to this recording, I had not played drums in nearly 5 years. The vocals are a little hard to hear in this one, but it was a lot of fun to make.

Shot with a Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1 and Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 “pancake” lens. VGA motion JPEG format. Edited and compressed with iMovie ’11.

Code Academy Week 3 has come to an end and, so far, I’m extremely satisfied. Although the curriculum seems to be moving quite fast, I’ve had no trouble keeping up and already feel confident in my ability to create a simple, fully-functional web application. There are, however, a few aspects of the class that I didn’t expect.

Here are 3 things about Code Academy that caught me off guard:

The Easy Way and the Hard Way

Something I didn’t know about Ruby on Rails (and perhaps other software programming languages, as well) is the idea that something can be accomplished with either 1 line of code or many lines of code. In any coding language there is always more than one way to do something, but it’s pretty amazing how hours and hours of work can be avoided by simply knowing one line of code that contains/accomplishes everything.

Case in point: we’ve spent at least the last 2 weeks slowly building a simple app; one where database information can be created, read, updated, and destroyed (CRUD). This application was built the hard way, line by line, hour by hour. Then, at the end of the day on Thursday, Jeff introduced to us a single line of code that, when entered into Terminal, could create everything that we’d spent the last 2 weeks working on (“rails generate scaffold”). When I learned this, it felt like that one dream sequence in Fellini’s 8 1/2 where Guido is stuck in gridlocked traffic and suddenly flies out the window of his car and freely soars over all the traffic.

Nevertheless, I appreciate that I learned things the hard way first, especially since I’m told that by week 5 or 6 that single line of code will no longer work for our needs.

Pair Programming vs. Note-Taking

It has come to my attention that pair programming—that is, 2 people working together at 1 computer to create 1 application—is a hugely important part of the software programming and web development world. Having worked in front-end web design, I’m no stranger to working with a close-knit team; yet, the practice of having 2 keyboards connected to 1 iMac, with myself and another person coding at the same time, is going to take some getting-used-to. On the other hand, it’s helped me to get to know some of my classmates and break out of my comfort zone.

The only aspect of this that kind-of bothers me is not being able to keep my laptop open to take notes. There seems to be a prevailing hypothesis that, by having your laptop open, you’re not paying attention to the class and not as focused on doing pair programming (speaking only for myself, this is not true). The proposed solution has been that we keep a shared Google doc open in the background to take notes together. I see 3 key problems with this:

1. Multi-tasking chaos! At any given time you’ll have open numerous Terminal tabs, files in TextMate, a Google doc, a join.me screen share of Jeff Cohen’s Keynote presentation, a localhost server window, and other necessary resources. All that swapping around between files becomes cumbersome and ultimately leads to poor note-taking.
2. Pen and paper: With laptops being disapproved of, many people have begun taking notes with pen and paper. This is simply not an option for people like myself who have atrocious handwriting. I much prefer to use the Evernote Mac app for my notes so that I have my notes synced up between my laptop, iPad, and iPhone and can access them anytime, anywhere.
3. Notes are personal: In any educational setting, no two people are ever going to have the same set of notes. Note-taking is a very personal thing in that it reveals the stuff a person thinks they would not otherwise be able to remember. A person should never have to feel embarrassed because they need to write down something that others may consider to be obvious or unusual.

HTML5 and CSS3

This one is relatively minor, but I didn’t realize that the HTML5 and CSS3 part of Code Academy is its own, separate class. The normal Tuesday/Thursday classes I attend will be almost strictly focused on Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and an assortment of other items. Every Monday night, Shay Howe holds a 2 hour class at Code Academy where HTML5 and CSS3 concepts are discussed.

In a way, this makes more sense given that different people in the class have widely varying levels of experience with front-end design and, thus, there is more time for people to ask questions and dive deeply into specific concepts. I’ll admit that I haven’t been to any of Shay’s classes yet, since my understanding is that the lessons so far have been fairly basic HTML and CSS. I’ve been working with these 2 things for over 10 years now, and consider myself fairly advanced (e.g.: I built this WordPress theme from scratch), so I plan to join in next week when they will hopefully be covering some of the more HTML5 and CSS3-specific concepts. Even still, it never hurts to have a refresh on some of that stuff.

Loving Code Academy so far. Next week I hope to start building my own, custom application. Details on that coming soon. I’ve also just purchased Douglas Crockford’s JavaScript: The Good Parts and am going to begin trying to learn JavaScript, as well.

"King Buzzo" by Charlie Thomason. India ink with brush and dip pen on paper. (Click to enlarge)

Over the last few years, The Melvins have become one of my favorite bands. Throughout 29 years of grunge/sludge metal awesomeness, their discography has grown pretty huge and they continue to tour to this day. In May of 2011, I got to see them at the Double Door in Chicago, where they performed their famous albums Houdini (1993), Lysol (1992), and Eggnog (1991) in their entirety. One of the best shows I’ve ever seen.

The band’s rotation has changed a few times, although singer/guitarist Buzz Osborne (aka: King Buzzo) and drummer Dale Crover are the longtime backbone. At different times throughout their career, the band has included bassists such as Krist Novoselic (Nirvana), Matt Lukin (Mudhoney), Lori Black (aka: “Lorax,” and daughter of Shirley Temple), Joe Preston (Earth), and others (they also now feature a second drummer, Coady Willis). In a 2009 article for Seattle Weekly, Novoselic reflected on the influence they had on grunge history and, especially, on Nirvana:

“Every Seattle band of the late ’80s owes a little something to the Melvins – a band that slowed down the tempo and played sludgy riffs. In 1990, Kurt Cobain and I were driving back from Los Angeles to Washington. We took the opportunity to stop by San Francisco and see our pals the Melvins, and mentioned that we were without a drummer. Scream were playing in North Beach and we all went to the show … Buzz introduced us to their drummer, David Grohl.”

Here are what I believe to be The Melvins’ 5 best songs (in no particular order):

Hooch (Houdini)

The opening track to what is arguably their best album (or at least their most mainstream) is absolutely ruthless. Dale Crover’s drums just get stronger and louder as the song progresses. The lyrics are what you might call poetic gibberish: “Exi-tease my ray day member / Half lost a beat away / Purst in like a one way sender / War give a heart like a fay.” This song is an excellent introduction to the band, given that it’s not as slow, drone-y, and feedback-laced as most of their other material.

Leeech (Gluey Porch Treatments)

There’s quite a bit of history behind this song. It started out as a Green River song (Green River being an early grunge band featuring future members of Pearl Jam and Mudhoney), although they reportedly thought the song was too repetitive and dropped it from their usual setlists (click here to hear a 1984 demo of the song on YouTube). The Melvins picked up the song and reworked it to be slower, shorter, simpler and, yet, much louder and grungier. About two-thirds of the way through the song, the guitars and bass fade out and Dale launches into a killer drum riff, which also gradually fades out into echos and reverb. Shortly after Gluey Porch Treatments was released, Buzz and Dale moved the band to San Francisco, while bassist Matt Lukin stayed in Seattle and formed Mudhoney with Mark Arm.

When Green River reunited in 2008 for Sub-Pop Records’ 20th anniversary, Mark Arm joked that the Melvins stole the song and never gave them credit. Green River’s 2008 live performance of the song is substantially better than their 1984 demo. See below…

 Second Coming/Ballad of Dwight Frye (Lysol)

Anyone familiar with The Melvins knows that when they cover a song, they truly make it their own. This combo of songs from their 1992 album are no exception. They the Alice Cooper song, slowed it down, and removed all the weird piano melodies, as well as the lyrics from the “Second Coming” part (which are some sort of odd religious stuff about “Hell is getting hotter, the devil’s getting smarter all the time”). What is left is a song that is much simpler than Cooper’s in terms of instrumental execution, but much angrier and crazier in terms of how the lyrics are sung.

Boner Records, who released the album Lysol, was initially unaware that the Lysol brand of disinfectants was a registered trademark. The album was later retitled simply Melvins, although fans still refer to the album by its true name.

Grinding Process (Deep Six)

By 1985, it had become clear that something very new and potentially important was happening in the Seattle music scene. C/Z Records was created for the expressed purpose of releasing an album that could shed light on some of the most notable bands within the scene. That album was Deep Six and featured songs by 6 early grunge bands: The Melvins, Skin Yard, Soundgarden, Malfunkshun, The U-Men, and Green River. One of the 4 songs The Melvins contributed was “Grinding Process,” which lives up to its title in the sense that it is a grinding, grueling, loud and crazy song that shows what The Melvins sounded like before they decided to slow things down.

The song was later featured on several Melvins EPs and compilations. More importantly, it was the first Melvins song I ever heard. When I started getting really in grunge in college, I purchased the compilation Sleepless in Seattle: The Birth of Grunge, which features the song as well as those of 19 other early grunge bands.

Joan of Arc (Houdini)

The intro to this song is so incredibly amazing to see live. In no other Melvins song (that I know of) will you hear Buzz scream at such a high pitch. Out of their entire discography, “Joan of Arc” is the ultimate head-banger and my own, personal favorite song of theirs. The song is really simple, and perhaps more mainstream that a lot of their other material—all I know is that, when they played this live last May, the crowd went INSANE.

The song begins with Buzz singing a slow, low-pitched verse against a palm-muted, distorted guitar. Suddenly, he bursts out with a long, dramatic scream and the rest of the band launches into a riff that is, in my opinion, their equivalent of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” If there is one memory of their 2011 show at Double Door that I will never forget, that is the moment.

End note: I created the above ink drawing specifically for this blog post. Please do not reuse without permission.

I recently visited my cousin Jimmy in Delaware and we recorded a cover of Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box,” which is pretty much my favorite song of all-time. Sorry, no vocals. It gets really good right around 2:30!

Charlie Thomason – guitar
James Stone – drums

Shot in 720p HD with a Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1 and Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 “pancake” lens. Motion JPEG format. Edited and compressed with iMovie ’11.

The Guardian‘s Jonathan Jones has long been one of my favorite writers on art and art history. Anyone who keeps up with his blog, Jonathan Jones on art, knows him to be an unabashed fan of the legendary Venetian painter Titian. It seems that nearly once a month he has a new article that at least mentions the famous Renaissance artist. I, too, am a huge fan of the 16th-century artist of Venice.

Jones’ latest post is in praise, specifically, of Titian’s clouds. In the post, he also mentions Giovanni Bellini’s portrait of Leonardo Loredan, which I once painted a sort of tribute to (The Melting Doge). What really blows me away though is the eloquence in which Jones is able to describe Titian’s work:

“You can breathe some of these paintings. The works of Giovanni Bellini are very vivid: his portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan seems infused with the calm, warm air of Venice; it has tangible atmosphere, it is oxygenated. Nature gets more dynamic with Giorgione’s Tempest. In Titian’s paintings, the clouds play fantastic roles in elusive dramas of the spirit and senses.
…
In The Bacchanal of the Andrians, the poised ambiguity depicted by Titian in Sacred and Profane Love gives way to revel and joy. A shepherd and hunters populate the green valley behind the marble basin. Beyond them, a village twinkles by a blue lake; above it all, silken clouds erupt over a band of yellow sky. Silver light catches these massing clouds, illuminating them like a flash of emotion or truth. Again and again, that kind of heart-stopping incandescence catches Titian’s clouds. Boozers cavort. Nudes disport. Yet above their pastoral party, great piled columns of white vapour are caught by the sun and set alight as if by inner fire.”

Mercy. I sure wish I could write like that. Pictured above is one of five paintings that comprise Titian’s Danaë series, on display at the Art Institute of Chicago.