So, it's 12:45am and I should absolutely *not* be starting a lengthy entry - as this one would become; however, it's on my mind and I have a few thoughts so I figure I might as well go and throw them out.

Barebacking among queer men

I wouldn't exactly say that what surrounds barebacking is a stigma, as we are more than happy to discuss and accept the behavior; however, we certainly enjoy attaching any sort of opinion to our observation. In keeping with this trite attempt at 'advancing' queer culture as is popular among some groups, we love to push the bar. But change is hard, eh? The post-AIDS (can we say post-AIDS yet?) porn industry is certainly a great example of said difficulty. This post really needs to end about here so my point without going into it yet is that I feel perhaps the stigma is not on the act of sex without a condom but rather on the idea of subjecting viewers to sex with a level of intimacy to which many are not accustomed. The act of actively and (borderline) sensually exchanging fluids which we have been trained to fear is indeed horrifying. It speaks to larger topics such as how we communicate with one another in gay male relationships, how we meet one another (hello, Grindr), etc.

As I mentioned, it's way too late/early to go into this but here's my brief brain-barf. Hopefully more to follow. Your comments are absolutely welcome.

I was trying to come up with a way to represent/convey a time lapse of something visually in a more concise or creative way. 

For example: I was sitting at Tartine on December 30 and from 6:45 to 7:05, I tried to note down each of the cars I saw pass by on 18th Street. I then sorted out a way to assign a numeric value to the cars based on a certain attribute (in this case, I used size). I then needed an additional variable - which unlinke the number would not necesarily need to apply to each of the items (in this case I used the car color, but could have, for example, used car make or model).

Here's an example of the first few lines of what I noted:

5 red, 3 tan, 4 yellow, 2 silver, 1 blu/slvr, 3 blu, 4 tan, 4 blk, 5 wht, 3 periwhinkle, 3 red, 4 blue, 1 silver, 4 blk, 4 tan, 3 silver, 3 wht, 3 blu, 3 wht, 3 cream (puplish), 4 silver, 3 silver, 4 navy.....

In this case, the number represents varrying sizes of cars (1=coupé, 6=a bus or truck).

This goes on for about a page in my sketch pad. So, now, what I wanted to do is figure out a way to translate this into a visual - whether it be a simple html table with the number equalling the width of a cell and the color being the background. This would be really basic and easily hand-coded.

So, again, the basic idea is that there is a set interger, and then some other piece of information which when put together with some sort of color library (whether it be simple CMYK formula, or a library of imported .gif's [from. say, car manufacturer's websites]. Then, take the # and have it translate into some sort of measurement and then the color be the color.

What would be cool - i think - is if i can (or find someone who can) put together a simple form that would allow people to go to a site (sort of like the kuler.adobe.com site) and input (or import) their numbers and colors and the PHP application will generate a simple html or css table, or auto-generate a pdf with the linear output.

So, I feel like this application is super simple.  The next part of this is then being able to apply this to broader pieces - things that may not be as easy as color of cars. I've been trying to think of some sort of project to do for World AIDS Day and the only thing I've been able to come up with is that I want to do something that visually conveys information (E.g. The Quilt, the ActUp Tombstone demonstration in NY from the early 90's) The thing that just popped into my head was looking at spending on HIV per demographic. This would typically be based in like a pie-chart (I'm sure I have some report somewhere in my files at work with that exact chart) but It'd be interesting to find another way of conveying the info that would create something more abstract but also more impactful. Perhaps if breaking it down by month? By service provider? What would be neat, i think, is if the formula could create something 3-dimensional.

Anyone have any coding ideas? Interest in helping this happen?