REMINISCING - 35 YEARS AGO

▲ click for a larger view, opens in new tab

​I had often said that in my days at the University of Lethbridge, I rarely took notes. I did not see any use of it at that time, since based on the course outlines, I studied the subject in advance, and came to class already prepared to add my own 2 cents worth in comments - even prepared to argue.........

But just for looks, I did have my notepad open. I may have written down a few things, but for the most part, I was doodling. Checking through a pile of old papers, I found this - probably from a English or a Mythology class I took, around 1980 or so (we had some advanced classes where several departments were involved - they were called 'Colloquial Studies').

---

This is the only notepad page that I kept, mixed in with a pile of old photos and stuff.

In case you are wondering about the writing on top: it's my own version of shorthand.
​I have not used it in decades, and frankly, I cannot even read it myself anymore!

​You may think (as many of my fellow students did) that I am just a goof - but the end results were that I graduated with a GPA of 3.96 out of 4.0, second highest in my class of 82.

I initially posted the note pad images on Steemit

My New Designs on Zazzle: LEGGINGS

I have started a new line to add to my apparel collections on Zazzle: 

A new line of leggings I just introduced recently. They are all based on details of my artwork that has been digitally enhanced in Photoshop, such as mirrored, color variations, filters etc. and these designs are exclusively used on my Zazzle products, so you may find matching accessories as well.

click to see the entire colllection
▼

LEGGINGS
by Art of the Mystic Otto Rapp

Since I mentioned accessories:

you can find many matching articles here

▼

ACCESSORIES
by Art of the Mystic Otto Rapp

PLEASE NOTE:
all of my designs on Zazzle are "Print on demand".
These designs are not mass produced!
Chances are that only a few select people on the entire planet would own one of my designs. 
If you really want to be unique and stand out from the crowd, then this is it!

Example: a line of Keds shoes I designed were discontinued 
While the World didn't end in 2012, the partnership between Zazzle and Keds ended!
What Keds has now is mass-produced, bland and  boring! 
There are only a handful of my designs in existence now.They are rare collectors items!

A new line was introduced by Delta Custom and I started adding my designs.
But checking up on it now, they are marked as 
[Sorry, this product is completely sold out. Notify me when it's back in stock.]

▲
click above to check the collection
I just hope they don't suffer the same fate as Keds!

Updates to begin the New Year

That I have not posted for a while is not due to that there is nothing new, just the opposite - I was very busy and just did not get around to post updates.

◄ a gratuitous selfie from New Years Day - dressing up with a fez given to me by a friend that day. 

So here are some of the things I had been working on late 2017:

STEEMIT:

I joined this blockchain posting platform in late August and had been a steady contributor since (slowing down a little toward the end of the year, Christmas and New Years holydays). It is in my opinion a better way to socialize than other social platforms, in particular: where you get likes on Facebook that you cannot take to the bank, on Steemit you get upvotes that translate into earnings of Steem, a cryptocurrency.

Here is my page:

I find I had good results with my posts and am satisfied that this network, founded in 2016, will quickly develop into a major social network, with the added incentive of being able to earn money from your posts. Added bonus: no annoying ads cluttering your page, nor in the news feeds, like they do on Facebook. There are some bots that monitor content, but none of this bothersome censoring you would find on Facebook, where the nipple-police is out in full force! Here it is your option to mark your posts as NSFW. 

 

NING PLATFORM for the Private Visionary Art Network:

I used this platform already since 2009 to gather some of the best Artists of my genre. The private network is not accessible to the general public, but I used embed features to put slide shows from this platform on a public website, the VISIONARY ART GALLERY (VAG). 

Late in 2017, Ning eliminated Flash content, which resulted in all the embedded slide shows not functioning anymore. This in advance to the announcement that Adobe’s Flash Player will officially be put to rest in 2020. While it primarily affected the Visionary Art Gallery site, to some extend it also affected its spin-off VISIONARY ART EXHIBITION and VISIONARY ART HALL OF FAME, as well as other sites I control that also occasionally use the embed codes, including some posts on this blog. This also affects my own website, ART OF THE MYSTIC OTTO RAPP.

Subsequently, I posted a message on the VAG Homepage regarding this, with a link to a more detailed explanation: IMPORTANT NETWORK INFORMATION: SLIDE SHOW EMBEDDING DOES NOT WORK ANYMORE!

Because of this development, these Websites had become construction Zones!

There are over 500 artists on the VAG site, plus uncounted other pages and features. My own website and the VAG spin-off contain also many pages that need to be worked on. This is a project that will keep me busy for quite some time. Thus I decided to also at the same time switch the outdated templates of the VAG and my own website to a more modern look, which also requires additional work on each page to customize them (I strive to give each artist a distinct personal look). The Hall of Fame and VA Exhibition are on attractive templates already, so no need for changes to those sites, other than the changes necessary because of the problems with Flash. But there may be older blog content on my sites that might still contain outdated coding which is near impossible to fix unless I hunt down each blog entry for all the years the sites had been active.  

To all the artist members of the Visionary Art Network on Ning:

I am in the process of downloading your images from the network, and uploading it to your pages on the public VAG site, as galleries and HTML5 slide shows.

The network fees are paid up until Summer 2018. By this time, I expect to be finished with the task of updating the public VAG and its affiliated sites. Once the changes to the VAG are complete, I will delete the Ning Network, which is no longer serving its main purpose of feeding content to our public pages. This will save me a major drain on my personal finances, since the costs came out of my own pocket, only partially offset by donations. There are still costs involved maintaining the public sites on Weebly and paying for the domains of these sites, so your donations are still needed and welcome to help me keep these sites on line.

Additional Notes:

The websites powered by Weebly (on my account there) had just recently security certificates (SSL) added. While the URL's now show this (https://) there also appears a info icon on the address bar (it does so with Chrome) where it says that there are some security problems on the site - when you mouse over this icon, it leads to an information page on Google Chrome: Check if a site's connection is secure. This would be important on merchandising sites where you enter sensitive information such as credit card numbers etc. My sites are not Merchandising sites, though you will find links to secure sites where prints are sold, for example. There is nothing on my sites where you would enter any information, other than maybe the contact pages, but there you have the choice of directly contacting my email, instead of using the contact form. 

I checked on Padlock which items would trigger this warning and found that this had to do with share buttons and some advertising banners. So there is nothing much to worry about the content.

WISHING EVERYONE A HAPPY AND SAFE NEW YEAR!