Wine art

This is a painting I made for a wine label. 

Here is a simple painting made into a wine label. It is basically
a copy of one on the internet.  

Another one of my paintings as a wine label. 

One of my favorite wine labels. 

One of my favorite photos. 

Here is a photo of Jenny that I was thinking of painting. I did a practice with it. 

A little practice painting riffing on Thomas Fedro'

I took this photo as a model for a painting, but I might just use it as a label as it is. 

Wine with pear and apple

The first picture is the painting, and the following is the photograph. The later pictures are photoshopped versions of the original photo.

Wine and Peppers

This is a painting I made for a wine label. While it is a little rough here, it looks better in label size.

This is a photo I took and then applied a photoshop filter to. I like it pretty well.

This is the original photo. I am planning to do a regular painting of it. 

Nike Pegasus Zoom 33 Review

It has only been 6 weeks since I got my Ghost 9's, but I have been having a sore knee. I went with my DW to Dick's Sporting Goods. I had time to kill while she looked at jackets.

I tried on these Pegasus, because I know some people love them.

I was surprised at how stiff they were on the inside of the foot. This seemed like it would be easy on my right knee, which has been hurting. I 


I ran 11 miles today in the new shoes, and my knees feel great.

I have also been babying them by running on a grade.

These shoes are pretty light at 311 g per shoe. This is 24 gram/shoe lighter than my Brook's Ghosts 9s.

They are nice looking shoes with a red-fade-to-black upper and the novel sticking around the laces. I like the hollow bottom under the heel too.

June 30 Update: Initially these shoes were great. They are more structured than other shoes and they gave me support that I wasn't used to. They are still OK, but I find after a few miles my fore foot is getting sore, and changing shoes makes that better. I am surprised that they wore out so fast since I have been rotating between multiple pairs of shoes. I have no more than 450 miles on these shoes, so it feels early to retire them. Perhaps I am being cheap, the websites say 350-500 miles is reasonable depending on your weight.

Perhaps that low density EVA foam is not holding up like it should. The midsole is sunken in the fore foot. The innersole is nearly new. 

Brooks Ghost 9 Running Shoes

I have had Brooks Ghost running shoes for a while, this is my fourth pair. The Ghost 9 is very much like the Ghost 8. [Click here to see older shoe reviews.) The sole seems to be exactly the same. The upper is more stylish with pattern in the vent holes. The shoe is 335 g which is 10g lighter than the Ghost 8.

I like this shoe pretty well. Much more comfortable than my other shoes, which may mean that they are wearing out. 

I get sore feet during the summer, perhaps because of walking barefoot, but perhaps because I do more miles. They feel pretty good in these.

June 30, 2017 update:  I set these aside for a while because the upper was so wide my foot would slide around causing some soreness. The shoe is not worn out at all, and after a few months I started wearing it again. No issues. 

Some Photos

Shots from 2 Sept 2016.

Abstract Still Lives

As you can see above, I have a wine blog, and I often look for labels that I like. These are usually abstracted still life with a theme that reflect my mood when I bottle it. Since I have a few days off, I am thinking about painting some still lives. Here are some inspirational examples from the web.

From Mark Webster at www.dailypainters.com

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/abstract-still-life-painting-robert-joyner.html

http://mladshoi.deviantart.com/art/Abstract-still-life-174280419

http://www.chess-museum.com/modern-and-modernist---special-show.html

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/abstract-wine-decantur-sherri-of-palm-springs.html

http://picterest.info/v2fpbwdq-wine-glass-drawing-abstract

More on my Pinterest page

New Shoe Revue: Adidas Pureboost ZG

My new running shoes are an improved Adidas Boost design. See my previous post of my previous pair. These are Pureboost ZG, obviously in the black & gray. It's got a knit upper which is stretch and breathable. I think it is comfortable especially in the bunion area where some shoes are too tight.

Black and gray make for dull photos in the blog, but for better shoes after these shoes have lived their life as running shoes and have been retired to casual shoes. There are some pretty nice fluorescent yellow Pureboost ZG's at Dicks. After I bought them, I notice Adidas has a sales that undercut Dick's -- but too late for me.

The Pureboost ZG is very comfortable as I expected from my previous pairs.

Wow! Adidas dropped the three stripes!!

If you look carefully, there are three strips by the toe. 

The bottom is not a typical design. Not sure about traction
wet slip resistance. 

299 grams; same as my pair in 2014, lighter than last year's. 

These shoes have a thicker outsole 3-4 mm than either previous pair. Hard to tell what it is made from. 

There is some soil on the shoe. I have run in them twice. As before, it has the illusion of good traction because of the high energy return. 

 It is 299 grams -- nearly the same weight at my first pair of Boost in 2014, and about 10% less than my Supernova's in 2015.












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August 2016 Update.
Un-happily I have retired these shoes from running, after one month and perhaps 50 miles.

The problem, which I did not realize earlier, is that these are actually slip-on shoes upon which laces were also added. What does that mean? There is an elastic band across the middle of the shoe -- its gray and you can see it in the photos. Underneath the laces there is no loose tongue which sits underneath the laces. Instead if one tightens the laces, the shoe fabric underneath has to pucker.

As the shoe broke in, it go looser, and my foot slipped forward. Since the shoe is not oversized, by toe touches the front of the toebox. I tried to tighten the laces to keep my foot back, but you can't without puckering the fabric in an uncomfortable way.

Bottom line is this shoe looks like a lace-up, but it is really a slip-on. When the shoe breaks in, it quickly becomes too loose the run in.

Too bad for me.

October Update:

I cut the elastic between the laces, and drilled two new holes for the laces, higher up closer to my ankle. This helps, and now I can run with the shoes.

I find the arch support a little too squishy and I wear an elastic band around my mid-foot to support it.

The Culture of Smiling

House, Hanges, Javidan and Gupta did a study of smiling, what they call affect, in different countries, and they use it study attitude toward individualism and the tie it to economics.

The highly individualistic Americans are in the middle -- smiling slightly more than most.

Existential quotes

JOHN GARDNER, GRENDEL:

It’s good at first to be out in the night, naked to the cold mechanics of the starts. Space hurls outward, falconswift, mounting like an irreversible injustice, a final disease.

I understood that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. I understood that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist. All the rest, I saw, is merely what pushes me, or what I push against, blindly – as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back. I create the whole universe, blink by blink.

…this one frail, foolish flicker-flash in the long dull fall of eternity

I too am learning, ordeal by ordeal, my indignity. It’s all I have, my only weapon for smashing through these stiff coffin-walls of the world. So I dance in the moonlight, make foul jokes, or labor to shake the foundations of night with my heaped-up howls of rage. Something is bound to come of all this. I cannot believe such monstrous energy of grief can lead to nothing! 

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We are all children of the same dark night, inhabited by the same demons, haunted by the same specters… 

It is not a question of finding an answer to the night of truth but of sitting up with one another through the night, of dividing the abyss in half in a companionship that is its own meaning.

 –John Caputo

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