brainstorms

Tuesday May 31, 2005

logo designs for rome

today i sent in three of my designs for the ROME project logo contest. all rendered in illustrator amidst two carboncore crashes. [i guess i should be cheered that i am not using tiger; i can actually get some work done instead of banging my head to the nearest wall for all the new and old stuff that are not working properly. sigh, what a flop] i have a number of other designs (on paper) that i simply could not find the time to render in illustrator. some would not have been acceptable anyway: i realized a couple of weeks ago ROME project wanted an all UPPERCASE logo whereas i had been working on all lowercase (surprise, surprise) designs. oh well, good practice anyway, and as david vestal put it, practice sharpens our perception and improves our performance.

some notes:

first one is what i call the paper-cutout logo, one of my favorites, inspired by paul rand and saul bass designs. it is hard to get the cutouts just right: one has to balance the letter cuts, cutout shapes, their placement and their colors. i can see doing dozens of variations until i am satisfied with all four elements. a note on the font: it is linotype herculanum, by adrian frutiger. it is based on the roman handwritings of the first century AD.

second logo is a custom typeface assembled to resemble a futuristic road sign that says something like go here and plug in. this is the logo that would look great on a golf shirt :) [initially, i wanted to assemble these letters as an homage to sun logo, but i could not make it work.]

third logo came out of a serendipitous encounter. i had designs with a connected, semi-cursive ROME when i came across a java applet that generates and solves mazes. [i do not recall how i ended up in a maze] its solution was a path that looked very (very) roughly like an r, m and an e. [sort of like seeing faces in clouds] a path through a maze seemed appropriate for a ROME logo... [most maze generators programmed in the usual way do not generate path crossings as you see with letter O here. these are called braid or multiply-connected mazes]

all submissions for the ROME logo competition are here.

june addendum: public voting site is here. [unfortunately 4images interface is clumsy and sluggish so requires some patience, but please vote.]

related reading: steven heller et al. paul rand, phaidon press, 2000.

Monday May 30, 2005

two haikus [distillery jazz festival]

spring shower -
sounds of jazz
washed away.

sat may 28/05 - some afternoon showers during the jazz festival. rows and rows of empty seats near the distillery main stage.

spring rain -
a new rythm
to jazz.

sun may 29/05 - more minor afternoon showers drumming on umbrellas.

[image: not a montage. actual feed pipe sticking from the second floor of the pump house, now balzac cafe. distillery district.]

[haikus copyright 2005, ozan s. yigit]

Thursday May 26, 2005

random notes: the distillery district jazz festival...

toronto's distillery district is one of my favorite places[1] to visit. this past weekend (and again this weekend) it hosts its annual distillery jazz festival. i was there last saturday, and hope to be there again this sunday. a few quick notes:

mark sepic: caught the tail end of his show at the fermenting cellar; his concluding (abbreviated) flamenco piece was very fluid and moving. he does school shows (and builds instruments on the spot for the kids) so i will recommend it for my son's school.

luluk purwanto & helsdingen trio: very good, energetic electric violin by luluk. interesting phrasing at times, with some indonesian riffs and instruments for added color.

the spirit of jazz: while i was outside waiting for flying bulgar klezmer band, my family enjoyed the spirit of jazz, a tour through the history of jazz (in style) for kids. [next day, my son floored me by asking me to play something jazzy in the car. [we listened to hard and soft bop all the way...]

flying bulgar klezmer band had a scheduling problem but its lead david buchbinder brought in another ensemble. alas, no match for the flying bulgars. there was a huge, somewhat disappointed crowd at the center of the distillery that afternoon... [i had waited for an hour]

mark laver and pete johnston: this duo did an excellent job improvising (bass, sax) to a charlie chaplin silent classic modern times with paulette goddard. an interesting choice [crushing, dehumanizing effect of industralization] and a wonderful idea. my son watched it with the same intensity he reserves for the kratt brothers's shows.

[1] i have no idea how long the district's artsy denial of cheap junk food and other stripmall-grade "conveniences" will last, but i will enjoy it while it lasts.

Wednesday May 25, 2005

harley dreams [multiple exposures in digital]

if you do not have a multiple-exposure capable DLSR (fuji s2 pro, nikon d2x), there are several things you can do: you can synthetically create the multiple exposure from a single exposure in photoshop [or gimp or digital darkrooom of your choice] or you can be a purist like me and actually make many exposures to be combined into one image, as you would do with film.

here is a harley davidson police edition engine block, in both kinds of multiple exposures. a synthetic multiple exposure [left image] is a simple multi-layer operation, a bit tedious for its mechanics, but quite entertaining for its results:

• copy n layers out of a single image
• for each layer do:
  • shift, rotate, resize or otherwise transform a layer
  • set visibility to lighten
• crop the result appropriately for composition and clean edges

the example on the right is just a double exposure, one regular image, and another image made out of focus for specular highlights. [this one is for lee schlais. nikon d70, nikkor 105mm f/2.8D]

[musical suggestions while gimping along: dead can dance, a passage in time, beggars banquet music, 1998.]

raw flaw

michael reichmann and jurgen specht have published a good essay about the camera raw problem, recently inflamed by nikon's unfortunate decision to encrypt NEF white balance information. [this essay is more or less a summary of what many photographers have been writing; nikon has already lost d2x sales as a result of its decision]

[this line from the article does not work]

But, in the US at least, with the Millennium Copyright Act, the game has changed. Simply put, anyone that cracks encrypted or otherwise protected intellectual property is subject to criminal prosecution. And, since it possibly can be argued that the code (not content) in an encrypted or "protected" RAW file belongs to its creator (meaning the camera maker), any company or programmer breaking that code needs have liability concerns.

this is a confusion over the creator of the intellectual property and the content vs its container. how do we seperate the two cleanly [if we can at all], and what rights does the photographer have over the container, the digital equivalent of mylar and silver halide crystals? i think there is a good argument that says every bit of information [eg. white balance] carried in the container for the unrestricted recreation of the image is a part of the intellectual property and it cannot be kept from its creator. as I have suggested before, hiding any of this information is an intolerable bit of idiocy, and is good grounds for a legal action against a manufacturer.

[musical recommendation: grant green, the latin bit, blue note]

Monday May 23, 2005

now reading...

a list of books (in no particular order) that i have read or been (slowly) reading or skimming in the last number of months. recommendation style is borrowed from my friend peter honeyman.

highly-recommended, recommended, good, ok, dont-waste-your-time, trash.

[carlin]when will jesus bring pork chops
[grayling] the heart of things
[willett] eat, drink and be healthy
[evening] photoshop cs for photographers
[lane] nobody's perfect
[bunge] philosophy in crisis: the need for reconstruction
[goldman & gabriel] innovation happens elsewhere
[jury] about face: reviving the rules of typography
[whyte] crimes against logic, load of blair
[dennett] sweet dreams
[weber] the success of open source
[frankfurt] the importance of what we care about: philosophical essays
[dershowitz] shouting fire
[pratchett] moving pictures
[williams] style: the basics of clarity and grace
[clocksin & mellish] programming in prolog: using the ISO standard
[stone] a field guide to digital color
[pylyshyn] seeing and visualizing: it is not what you think
[marsh] blue note album cover art: the ultimate collection
[bittman] how to cook everything
[dawkins] a devil's chaplain
[evans & gruba] how to write a better thesis
[kingwell] catch and release
[moore] in other words
[pratchett] once more *with footnotes

[notes: i did not have the time to attach barnes&noble links. will do so soon.
grayling book, as with his earlier volumes [along with many other books printed in britain] is in acid paper. i am totally disgusted. i have decided not to waste money on any hardcover printed on acid paper. [some online booksellers now make note of acid paper.]
evening's photoshop book is one of the better books out there, but of course a cs2 edition is coming out soon. i wonder if i should hold off for another couple of months for adobe to release cs3, cs4, cs5, and cs-next... blecch.
note that blink is missing from this list, even though bookstores are nearly giving it away. i have now skimmed it with enough detail to know it is mostly anodyne fluff and i refuse to buy it until it is remaindered. i really worry his next target will be the computing industry, eg. open source...
frankfurt's essays are heavy going and require some exposure to philosophy, but well worth the effort. the one unusual essay about bullshit has been published as a tiny book.]

Sunday May 22, 2005

random notes: revenge of the sith

to borrow a line from dennett: must we talk about star wars? apparently we must. so i saw the sith as i must; i had seen the new hope in theatres a long time ago in a life far far away. for this installment, awful dialogue is a mere detail [i realised this later while watching a silent chaplin piece] and may as well be in a foreign tongue - the raw power of deceit and murder in brilliant digital imagery and color carries the day. i think the only bothersome detail is how fast one changes permanently from an angry and confused young man deeply in love to a murderous nutbar with remnants of some identity and especially of that love. lucas thinks past displays of weakness and difficulty of letting go of things somehow prepares us for this nearly instant change, but i would argue it does not. there is no falling into a dark side vortex here, but willing service. we are supposed to evaluate this change for someone who has gone (and going) through tough mental training. i guess i have too much respect for a good mind to surrender it easily to cheap storytelling.

i did read anthony lane's hilarious new yorker review. he has some good points, but i think resorts to too much ridicule, and not enough analysis. alas, right on the money in general, when he writes: break me a ****ing give.

related reading: harlan ellison, luke skywalker is a nerd and darth vader sucks runny eggs in harlan ellison's watching, underwood-miller, 1989.
anthony lane, nobody's perfect: writings from the new yorker. [good cover design for the paperback. probably not immediately obvious that it was inspired by saul bass cover and poster art. see anatomy of a murder.]

star wars has no people. - ellison

[image: an 1.5in lego lightsaber, running out of power. oz/05]

Tuesday May 17, 2005

c r i t i c - an acronym for critical thinking

this month's skeptical inquirer magazine has an article on an information-literacy version of wayne bartz's CRITIC acronym [SI sep/oct 2002] for critical thinking:

C	claim?
R	role of the claimant?
I	information backing the claim?
T	testing?
I	independent verification?
C	conclusion?

[important to note that role does not discredit or invalidate a claim (genetic fallacy) but it does effect the analysis for the remaining steps]

see also: critic materials at butler university libraries.
related reading: fashionable nonsense

[may/june issue of SI is worth the price just for the annotated periodic table of elements ("26 elements have been added since 1923. WHEN WILL IT END?") at the back, and the alternative cobb county table of elements: earth, fire, air, water. (rotfl!)]

Wednesday May 11, 2005

open-source effort is a terrible thing to waste...

there are many acts of stupidity that leave me nearly speechless, and the recent FSF/stallman calls for a fork of OOo (thus avoiding the "java trap") and a rewrite of java are amongst them. this clumsy eWEEK article has the sordid details.

when one is speechless, one's mind is moved into unfamiliar spaces. in this case, i had to think hard about the nature and role of FSF, and about new and creative open source projects in computing, two things at increasing odds with one another.

i no longer think FSF deserves the support and energies of computer scientists and open-source hackers.

in open-source computing, we are not supposed to waste our valuable resources in the increasingly irrational battles against each other and each other's licenses; we are supposed to be professional and smart, and we are supposed to produce good computing solutions to real problems that matter. we are here to make a difference, not slobberingly rework those things that already made a difference.

on the other hand, as my hero kenneth galbraith once put it, if all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.

related reading: robert j. sternberg, why smart people can be so stupid
yale university press, 2002.

Tuesday May 10, 2005

recent good quotes

talent determines only how fast you get good, not how good you get. -- richard p gabriel ( triggers and practice)

knowing the answer in advance, and being immune to contradictory evidence are typical of pseudoscience. -- mark parakh and matt young

the trick of getting donkeys down from minarets is always to find that part of the donkey which seriously wishes to get down. -- patrician (jingo)

statistics are the chemical weapon of persuasion -- jamie whyte (crimes against logic)

preoccupation with self is the greatest barrier to seeing, and the hardest one to break. -- freeman patterson

wisdom is one of the few things that looks bigger the further away it is. -- terry pratchett

putting your fingers in your ears and humming does not constitute a viable solution to an enduring problem. -- rob pike (plan9 mailing list)

[notes: parakh&young quote is (i think) from an article in the skeptical enquirer. i do not remember where i read and noted the pratchett quote.]

Friday May 06, 2005

fountain pen ink and its color...

i have been writing with fountain pens since highschool. for the last two decades, my preferred color is turquoise, and for the last year or two, the preferred ink is montblanc turquoise. as of tonight, i also know its color values (lightness 65.44, chroma 49.71, hue 225.97) and can compare it against most other turquoise inks i may want to use. the site is robin myers imaging and under the projects section, there is a comperative list of 269 fountain pen inks and their associated color information. [includes graphs sorted on lightness, chroma and hue values. also under his references, a collection of books on fountain pens].

wonderful stuff. thanks robin.

Wednesday May 04, 2005

notes about content

some notes about this blog content [also answering some questions that came up recently]

copyright: all text in my blog entries are covered under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivs license. [i do not care for the poorly designed by-nc-nd logo, so it is not displayed here.]

photography: unless i note otherwise, all photographs on my blog entries are my work, either scanned from my slide images, or recently made with a nikon d100 or d70. if asked, i would consider providing high-resolution versions of these images for not-for-profit uses. i do sell art prints from time to time.

books: i talk a lot about books in this blog, but only about books i have in my library and have read, have been reading, or have skimmed [sometimes called pre-reading] in some detail. [alas, too many good books, not enough time.]

links: all my book links go to barnes & noble in the US. this is not because i care more about b&n (i do not), but because everyone seems to link to amazon out of inertia, which annoys me. i am not convinced amazon deserves the strange free ride it has been getting through reviews, lists and links as if it was a national public library.

music: all recommended music is from my admittedly limited cd library; jazz and classical tends to be dominant. [as i am writing this, i am listening to a track from nicholas payton's gumbo nouveau]

name: the blog username is plan9 which probably looks odd. i wish it was oz but that was taken. yes i do run plan9 at my home lab. [badly needs an upgrade] alas, i do not do much development with plan9. [i once wrote a haiku about plan9 on my vaio.]

poetry: i am quite serious about haiku [eg. basho entry] but (with few exceptions) much less serious about western poetry. poets are always tempted to say too much -- lee gurga [many programmers are like poets]

case: as may be obvious, i intensely dislike uppercase. i will use them where i have to, eg. in formal writing, but in my blog space, anything i have to type is lowercase only.

misc: this blog content is revision controlled. i use bitkeeper and i have a real license. i believe in using the best tools i can efford for the job, not the second or third best tool. [cvs is to source code control as horse and buggy are to transportation -- anon]

must read: innovation happens elsewhere

goldman and gabriel's new book innovation happens elsewhere: open source as business strategy is now available. i hope it will be widely read in the industry. [i do not have a copy yet, but soon] here is the table of contents (excluding appendices):

[musical recommendation: tbd]

Tuesday May 03, 2005

in the elder days of art...

longfellow wrote:

In the elder days of art
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part
For the Gods are everywhere

found this in Harry Frankfurt's essay on bullshit [now published as a tiny hardcover - originally a part of frankfurt's philosophical essays collected in the importance of what we care about, cambridge, 1988] alas, elder days are always marching forward, so this bit of verse is as relevant now as it was when written...

[image note: interior view of the window above the king enterence of st. james cathedral, toronto. see also my photo montages for an outside view]

Monday May 02, 2005

blog vocab

blog·suck·er (n)
1. utility to aggregate blog content into a feed
2. a bottom feeder that copies some blogger's content without appropriate permissions to enhance another blog, or to build a news story.
blog·suck·ing /-ki[ng]/ adjective
see also: blog doping

joe·blog (n)
anonymous blogger

blog·op (n)
an anonymous blogging service