A new look, for a journey that began nearly two years ago.
Along with the new look-and-feel, I switched the blog back-end from Blogger to Movable Type 3.0.
The inspiration for the design, came from the striking cover of the 1959 edition, of Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture.
For more information about the re-design, visit the About page.
I recommend exploring the updated Photography, Programs, and Words sections.
If you notice anything strange/broken, leave a comment.
I'm getting married on the 22nd of this month.
The new design for this page is almost complete.
Busy times.
Amuse yourselves with my del.icio.us links and this turntablism tutorial [RealMedia].
Once mastered, Words can be constrained to five or less Characters.
Experienced players, may choose to restrict Words to exactly five Characters.
Grammar, Language and Structure can be ignored, or remixed, for poetic effect.
Our overseas adventures begin in September. As I will be working while abroad, I wish to compile a collection of essential Windows tools to bring along on CD. (I'm hoping that the majority of these tools will be freeware.) Along with this CD, I will bring The Ultimate Boot CD, (as well as this Windows-based boot CD.)
What freeware/shareware applications do you consider essential? Submit your list as a comment.
Please forward the permalink for this post to your friends, so that they can contribute as well.
Here is the preliminary tools list:
Blogging as constrained writing. When else do I write?
- Emails
- Shopping Lists
- The Odd Poem
A roundup of constrained writing on the web. Constrained Thinking: From Network to Membrane.
"This thesis discusses the importance of the book as image, object, and text. [With] specific examples as they pertain to the publishing of books in general and to Daniel Richler's Kicking Tomorrow (1991-3) in particular" - Image, Object, Text
The translation of Harry Potter & the Philosopher's Stone into Ancient Greek.
How to Read a Philosophy Paper (including this one.)
Chomsky for Philosophers.
The Philosopher's Game - A description of the fascinating game, Rythmomachy.
Flatland - A romance of many dimensions - By Edwin A. Abbott 1838-1926.
Prophetable colors - A look at the Color Marketing Group. "The CMG is a trade organization, with 1,500 members drawn from a bunch of different industries. Twice a year they get together in Alexandria, VA, to come up with long-term and short-term color predictions."
"A thousand goals have there been so far, for there have been a thousand peoples. Only the yoke for the thousand necks is still lacking: the one goal is lacking. Humanity still has no goal" - Nietzsche and the Body of Knowledge - The philosophy of archaeology.
J(erome) D(avid) Salinger - Uncollected Writings.
Narratech - Storytelling in the digital age - Theory Links.
Informal Music Analysis: A Critique of Formalism, Semiology, and Narratology As Discourses on Music.
Syntactic Theory of Visual Communication, Part One. ("There can be no words without images." -Aristotle)
Dirk Gently's I-Ching Calculator.
For the math nerds: Autologlyphs.
40 remixes of original Nintendo soundtrack material.
The evolution of western thinking about nature. Our quest to distance ourselves from the earth.
Subway systems of the world, presented on the same scale.
The robots are coming. The robots are coming.
Self-reference : "This entry is about self-reference, so (inevitably), it refers to itself." - From the BBC's guide to life, the universe and everything: h2g2.
Also found at h2g2:
- English Strong and Weak Verbs
- The Development of Our Alphabet
How's that for constraint? ;)
If programming books read like why's (poignant) guide to ruby, I would smile more often. (Related: why the lucky stiff)
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If you use del.icio.us, flip: Extispicious, is an "automatically recombinant memeplex. [...] Tags are scraped from a quiet corner of del.icio.us and cached for a day."
It started with this diagram and this script.
Extispicious visualizations can get very complex. (Check the second image.)
I use spurl to ping my links to del.icio.us. Manually entering a category, with each del.icio.us update, would lead to a more complex map with low-weighted links.
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Create PDF files for free with pdf995. No need to crack Adobe Distiller;)
Jack Kerouac - Dean Moriarity - Poetry for the Beat Generation.
The much hyped book, The Rule of Four, centres on a 15th-century manuscript, The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Although the book is a work of fiction, the manuscript truly exists.
"The action of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili takes place in a dream. The books opens on the hero, Poliphilo, who has spent a restless night because his beloved, Polia, has shunned him. At the break of day, he finally falls into a deep slumber and his 'Hypnerotomachia,' or, as it can be roughly translated, 'struggle for love in a dream,' begins."
The above quote was taken from this e-book, which explores the mysterious manuscript.
A scanned copy of the HP is also available.
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I want to learn Latin. Previously, I posted a link to TextKit, an online source for free Ancient Greek and Latin e-books. Since then, I have discovered the following:
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Download true random numbers generated using a quantum random number generator upon demand.
Icon Semiotics: A Common Visual Representation.
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - Video Lectures by Hal Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman. (Related: E-Textbook for this course.)
The sixteen first rules of fiction.
Alternative Handwriting and Shorthand Systems. (Related: Handywrite)
GAlib - A C++ Library of Genetic Algorithm Components.
Numerical Recipes in C - An online version of this must-have programming guide.
The Internet is our archive. We are the archivists. Das Glasperlenspiel.
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"At times, it helps to think of writing as carpentry. That way, writers and editors can work from a plan and use tools stored on their workbench. You can borrow a writing tool at any time. And here's a secret: Unlike hammers, chisels, and rakes, writing tools never have to be returned. They can be cleaned, sharpened, and passed on."
Fifty Writing Tools - The workbench of Roy Peter Clark.
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Colour:
Color in Motion - An Animated and Interactive Experience of Color Communication and Color Symbolism.
Word Color - "A windows program that uses Google Image Search to determine the color of a word or string of words. It goes out there, retrieves the top 9 images and loops through all pixels, calculating the average hue, which is later converted to a color."
ColorCell - "An experimental website about colors. Colorcell wants to find the most popular color combinations;" genetic algorithms meet design.
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Digital Snapshot - "What does a moment look like? Can snapshots freeze a moment in time? ... [M]otion fragments were captured and rearranged in a new visual context via unconventional digital manipulations." This project explores the nature of time, context and motion.
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German style board games, like the Settlers of Catan, can be played online at the BrettspielWelt portal.
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My HD died with two days left on the warranty.
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"A skeuomorph is a design feature that is no longer functional in itself but that refers back to a feature that was functional at an earlier time. The dashboard of my Toyota Camry, for example, is covered by vinyl molded to simulate stitching" - N. Katherine Hayles
An Interconnected look at skeuomorphs.
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"Shaping a networked society is a design adventure. A public sphere in cyberspace will not emerge from technology itself. Rather, a public sphere must be designed. But design, in this case, is not only about the intentional design performed by professional and designated designers. To a large extent, the total cyberspace network, and even more so the part of it that can be seen as a 'public sphere', is designed through use. This paper is about that form of design."
Unintended Use: The Public Sphere Designed by the Public
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"This text proposes a series of definitions, the aim of which is to better circumscribe what is, and what is not, meant by writing under constraint."
Toward a General Theory of the Constraint
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"In the early 90s a group of people were attracted to each other because of their shared interest in the idea of time, and in the idea of responsibility for the future. This group of people came to call themselves the Long Now Foundation. [...] We felt that there was a need to create some new form of human thinking about Time. We were all aware that everything was getting faster."
Brian Eno talks about the Long Now Foundation. (Related: The Long Now Foundation)
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"Ever felt as though a piece of music is speaking to you? You could be right: musical notes are strung together in the same patterns as words in a piece of literature, according to an Argentinian physicist."
Tunes create context like language. (Related: Zipf's law and the creation of musical context, which discusses the extension of the notion of context from linguistics to the domain of music.)
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The Naropa University Beat Generation audio archives.
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Exactitudes, "an almost scientific, anthropological record of people's attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity".
My hard-drive is dying. When I try to access certain files it goes: Clickclickclickclickclickclicklclick. Next, the computer freezes and I have to run scandisk to repair the bad sectors. MS Outlook went first. Messenger was second. Now explorer.exe is randomly clicking and crashing!
Luckily, the HD is under warranty. But what a pain in the arse: Remove HD -> Mail to IBM -> Wait -> Receive new HD -> Full Reinstall. Arg.
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Based on the feedback from my last post, I have tweaked my new blog template. Again, feedback is welcome.
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MadInkBeard is a blog dedicated to the idea of formal constraints in writing. (Via Languagehat. Related: Translation and the Oulipo - The Case of the Persevering Maltese)
The Wooster Collective has profiled the Winnipeg based graf collective, Two-sicks. I am regularly inspired by their work.
Want to read Ulysses? Why not read one page a day?
Social Design Notes on postering and preaching to the converted.
Streetmemes tracks the propagation of graffiti memes.