Graffiti vs. gray paint

by Andy Zeigert

2 min read

One of my regular running routes takes me along the access road for a local canal. It's a public right-of-way as well as a road regularly used by the Central Oregon Irrigation District.1

The canal itself passes under a highway, and the access road passes under through its own little tunnel, barely wide enough for a truck to pass through, but perfect for pedestrian traffic. It's maybe a hundred feet long. Concrete and blacktop. Adequate drainage. Utilitarian.

An overview of the canal tunnel, facing east. An overview of the COID canal tunnel under the Bend Parkway, facing east.

But what it unexpectadly offers is a huge, secluded concrete canvas for local taggers and graffiti artists. And they are locked in a constant struggle with COID, who apparently prefer the walls to be grayish tan at all times. Any graffito here is ephemeral, destined to be painted over by the district within a week or two of appearing. 2

Spray painting these walls is illegal, make no mistake. But places like this are destined to be gallaries for punks and weirdos, and maybe we should allow a little room in our society for outsider art. Just please don't tag my garage door.

I'm not an art critic and especially not a graffiti critic. Many of the marks I've seen are amateur, rudimentary, perhaps created in haste and with little to say. But I've documented many of them.

Here are my favorites.3 I'll post more when I get 'em.

Disobey or Die Captured March 19, 2021

Jigsaw? Captured March 19, 2021

Siuske Captured October 27, 2021

Eyes Captured July 20, 2022

Piss Captured August 14, 2023

Mind spray Captured May 22, 2025

Flower Captured August 7, 2022

Crown Captured November 8, 2021

Spider Captured August 14, 2023

UFO Captured July 20, 2022

Mountains Captured August 7, 2022

Cowboy Captured July 20, 2022

Flash Captured May 7, 2023

Cassette Captured June 3, 2025

Flower Captured July 4, 2022

Radish Captured August 7, 2022

Graffiti can be a wonderful ongoing conversation between both artist and cleanup crew.

This art sucks! Captured July 20, 2022

Disappointing! Captured May 19, 2024

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Infographic illustration raw scans

by Andy Zeigert

3 min read

In a past life, I worked at a newspaper as a graphics reporter. Among other things, I made infographics and key art for all sections of the paper. I relied heavily on digital tools (Photoshop, Illustrator) but when it came to sketching or original art I was and remain stubbornly old school.

I stumbled upon this cache of raw scans for infographics and illustrations and decided to share them, with some minimial context.

Aneurysm

Pencil drawing showing steps to surgically correct an aneurysm. Something to do with an aneurysm? I think I eventually traced this in Illustrator.

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Using systemd timers as a cron replacement

by Andy Zeigert

5 min read

Screenshot of result of running systemctl status for a systemd timer.

I recently decided to upgrade an old utility instance on AWS from Amazon Linux 2 to Amazon Linux 2023. This was mostly easy, as the linux flavors are very similar, however…

Cron is not installed by default on Amazon Linux 2023, and AWS recommends using systemd to run scheduled tasks instead of using cron. So I decided to learn how to do that.

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More posts can be found in the archive.