mykle systems labs

Adding insult to injury

Revenue Bureau,
City Of Portland

To whom it may concern,

On April 14th I attempted to pay the Portland Arts Tax. I used the city’s online payment system at https://www.portlandoregon.gov/revenue/artstax/ . I didn’t know that the city had extended the deadline for payment by a month, and wanted to be sure I paid all my taxes before the April 15th tax deadline. At your website I completed a transaction, was thanked for my payment, received a receipt and a confirmation number, and thought the matter settled.

Then, on April 24th I received a demand for payment from the City of Portland for sixty dollars — $35 in unpaid taxes plus an additional $25 “returned item fee,” on or before May 4th. I investigated with my bank, who assured me that they had not returned any items, or seen any transaction attempted at all, even though funds were available in my account for the whole month of April. They suggested I may have made a typo.

I paid the tax again online, on April 29th, using a credit card. I have confirmed that the funds left my account on April 30th..

I am writing now to protest this ludicrous and arbitrary assessment of $25 — an extra 71% on top of the tax itself — as well as your infuriating demand that I pay the Portland Arts Tax by May 4th, eleven days earlier than the May 15th deadline for all other citizens of Portland. Why is this my reward for trying to responsibly pay a tax that thousands of citizens are trying to dodge?

How can such fees be justified? If the City of Portland has incurred any costs or damages due to an online banking transaction error (which I highly doubt), they might as well consider it part of the cost of extracting wealth from their citizens, like any other entity that accepts online payments. I don’t know what caused this transaction error. I may have mistyped a digit, or there might just as easily have been a technology failure with your website, or at your bank, or at my bank. At any other online payment site, a transaction is checked before it’s run, and if it fails for any technical reason the user simply tries again. To levy massive fines against honest customers for unexplained technical failures or simple human mistakes is pure extortion.

I have paid my taxes on time, and that is all I’m paying.

Sincerely,

Mykle Hansen,
ARTIST

Finally I can say I made some robots!

I have always been fascinated by noisemaking devices, and for years I’ve been hoarding unwanted speakers, amplifiers and tape decks in my garage. Lately I’m in a closet-cleaning mood, so I conceived an art project around the idea of pushing these beautiful old machines out into the world.
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Hello universe … nice hat! Please lend me your undivided attention for this Public Service Announcement!

There once was a band of malcontent street musicians known as The Bad Mintons, who embarked on a noble quest to serenade drunk people out of their spare change and cigarettes. The Mintons earned their money the hard way, and they spent it on the hard stuff. Whiskey was their muse, tobacco was their breakfast, and the Devil was their personal friend.

And lo, this band of neer-sing-wells minstrelled to and fro across the face of our great nation, bringing joy and laughter wherever they did play. Their friendly, cheerful music kicked sorrow in the face and crushed the windpipe of unhappiness. And they did this, and they did that … blah blah blah, time went on, et cetera … now they’re old and boring.

BUT! They made a music video, which will be released this month! It’s the video for their superhit megasingle SNAZZY PORTLAND — shot in the streets of Portland, Oregon! Staring the people of Portland! Co-starring the streets, buildings, and inanimate objects of Portland! It’s a song about our city: why we love it, what’s great about it, and how much other cities suck.

We’re very proud of our little film, and we want to show it off to you. In the next two weeks, we’ve organized three — three! — special chances for our Portland neighbors to watch this video on the big screen, in advance of its internet small-screen release.
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SNAZZY PORTLAND — the epic music video for the smooth-metal superhit of the same name — is nigh upon complete! Kudos to Rick Kent of Kentwood, California for taking on the crucial dual roles of editor & taskmaster, and driving this sucker out the front door!

In late June, we’re going to throw a little party to thank everybody — gadzooks, dozens upon dozens of you — who contributed your time and talent to help us complete this overambitious project! Watch this space for an official invitation.

Meanwhile, we thought you might be tantalized by a few production stills ….

Freezing Greetings from the 2011 Art Shanty Projects!

This is the first moment I’ve had in six days to pause and document stuff since I landed at MSP last Tuesday and dived immediately to work on our contribution to this biannual festival of art, architecture and strange behavior on frozen Medicine Lake in Plymouth, MN.

Despite all our long-distance planning we got a severely late start on the actual construction of our shanty. By the time I arrived Brady had organized a workspace, tools, materials and a lovely recycled platform donated by members of the 2010 Vista Shanty team. The two of us worked around the clock for three days straight, and with the aid of some very helpful volunteers our Audio Adventure Shanty just barely squeaked in under the official Friday night deadline for installation on the lake.
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In two days I fly off to my home town of Minneapolis, Minnesota for ten days of bone-chilling, back-breaking, ear-warming good times with my pals Brady Clark and Kelly Peach. Together we are making a piece for the Art Shanty Projects, a recurring winter arts fest on Medicine Lake that I’ve been wanting to see for years.
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I’ve just returned from an excellent near-death experience, courtesy of our local post-apocalyptic bicycle buccaneers known as C.H.U.N.K. 666 . We rode amphibious bicycles across the Willamette River, battled aqua-Nazi CHUDs, claimed Ross Island as our own nation, roasted weenies, amused the Coast Guard, drank whiskey and got home in time for tea.

CHUNK are the original Portland bike freaks — they put the rest to shame. I first wrote about them for the Portland Mercury way back in 2000, and they’ve only gotten worse since. The Chunkathlon, their yearly gladiatorial melee, was elevated to a higher plane of existence several years ago because they broke this one. The core team members have all grown, mutated and metastasized. Some have been raising a new generation of bicycle warlords. Others are writing books, playing the viola, doing jail time. Chunk 666 has kept such a low profile lately, some people have even dared to suggest they ride no longer.

But fuck those people. Chunk is still chunking along; they do it for themselves, not you. Last weekend’s ride was on the Willamette River. On it, not next to it. Try that on your fixie.
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Nerd bulletin! If you’re an OS X user, and you’re using the version of Postfix that came with your operating system, and you are seeing log messages similar to this one once per minute in mail.log:


Jul 21 16:08:39 snowy postfix/master[6565]: daemon started -- version 2.4.3, configuration /etc/postfix
Jul 21 16:08:39 snowy postfix/qmgr[6567]: DE1D92E78E75: from=, size=3602201, nrcpt=9 (queue active)
Jul 21 16:09:39 snowy postfix/master[6565]: master exit time has arrived


… then you’re not alone! Many people are reporting the “master exit time has arrived” messages, which seem to be just unwanted log noise. But if, between “daemon started” and “master exit,” you are seeing the same e-mail message logged over and over, then you and I are partners in digital miscommunication. Outbound e-mail is getting stuck.

Today I suffered from, investigated and solved this problem. Here’s a quick fix you can try:
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UPDATEDZ! Core77 now has a ton of photos online, some video too. Here are great pix and a play-by-play of the complete fab process (trés fab!) and here are a bunch more action shots of the float conquering Portland.

I haven’t blogged about this much, but last month I was tangentially involved in helping the good folks over at Hand-Eye Supply light up their float for the Starlight Parade with about 1000 feet of animated extra-thick electroluminescent wire.

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Hello everybody! Sorry it’s been so quiet over here … I’ve been preoccupied with unicorns.

The last three months have been rainy, indoorish months for me and Portland. Writing books is still my day job, but I’ve also be surprisingly, enjoyably, annoyingly busy with these smart lights. It’s been an educational odyssey: so far it’s required circuit-board fabrication, AVR programming in C and assembler, iPhone hacking, waterjet cutting, lamp design, bicycle maintainence, and lots and lots (lots!) of soldering. I’ve enjoyed it all, but what a time sink! (If only I could flip one of these AVR pins to source time instead of sinking it …)

Something about blinking, glowing light is still compelling to me, but I really do hope that the sun will come out soon and I’ll lose interest in this weak substitute. The goal I’ve set for myself is to have these lights mounted on my tallbike in time for Pedalpalooza, Portland’s three-week bicycling festival. I’ve always wanted ambulance lights on my tallbike, and these should provide the required traffic-shifting pep.
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