Farsong Blog-o-Matic

link the left | link the right*

I love the juxtaposition of things across my displays. It's a chaotic sort of interactive multimedia-art for disseminating ideas directly to my mind -- web, RSS, images, all to a soundtrack I select.

It's taking a step back and seeing the things I use as functional art -- pieces of design that also happen to be used. It's an interesting shift of paradigm -- design with function instead of the normal thought of function with design**.

I might be completely insane to see this and call it art. Then again, it might just take that to see art in this fast-moving world. Plus, I'd rather not get into the sophomoric pseudo-intellectual discourse about the definition of art***.

--
* I'll be honest when I say that I first read the text here, my mind added another "o" so I thought it read "poop." Then again, the juxtaposition of this word and the idea of art is another example of the wonderful dada sensibility at work.
**This is me being idealistic, seeing things not as they are, but as what they can possibly represent. Then again, I'm still of the age where I can be idealistic, and haven't yet progressed to the age where I'm cynical, jaded, and just a little bitter. I'm hoping to never actually reach that age.
It is quite possible that more-artistically-inclined persons never actually reach this age, and are instead, suspended in a rather wonderful romantic limbo.
This also might be existential, dadaist, or such, depending upon the philosophical Zeitgeist.
*** It's quite simple: if it is art, it's art; if it's intent is artistic, it's art.

Keming (kem'-ing) n.
The result of improper kerning.

If you don't get the joke, just be thankful that you're not a typography and layout geek. If you are, I know your pain when looking at all the badly-laid-out things all over this world.

Now, I don't usually like shirts with words on them, but this one is just so brilliant and witty that I think I have to get it.

Trajan: The font for lazy movie graphic designers.
It's that epic font that you see on all movies ever. Here's an amusing video about it.

And in that same typographic vein, here's a “Behind the Music” sendup of Cooper Black (the Pet Sounds typeface) called “Behind the Typeface.”

At the very least, I know jakepaikai will get a kick out of this.

So, Rands in Repose has written a cool article about nerds and the way they work. It's insightful and terribly funny, but mostly because it's true--and quite true for me.

Understand your nerd’s relation to the computer. It’s clichéd, but a nerd is defined by his computer, and you need to understand why.

First, a majority of the folks on the planet either have no idea how a computer works or they look at it and think “it’s magic”. Nerds know how a computer works. They intimately know how a computer works […]

Completely. I take the things apart for fun to become familiar with the parts and their locations, incase of need of repair, or more often, up-grade.

Nerds are funny

Humor is an intellectual puzzle, “How can this particular set of esoteric trivia be constructed to maximize hilarity as quickly as possible?” Your nerd listens hard to recognize humor potential and when he hears it, he furiously scours his mind to find relevant content from his experience so he can get the funny out as quickly as possible.

Completely. It's a highly-indexed, cross-referenced bit of solid-state storage with a relevancy filter. Moreover, it works fast so as to link disparate items/facts/ideas in as little as three jumps. Of course, by mentioning these things, it effectively kills the conversation as the rest of the people pause to figure out just what was said and how and why it fits. It's why I'm the Conversation Ender.

Of course, when I'm with someone else whose brain also operates in that way, instead of conversations ending, they take off at a ludicrous speed with topic-shifts and jumps that none else can follow.

[The Nerd Handbook via Mental_Floss]

Iron Sky
Nazis? Check.
Space? Check.
Moon base? Check.

“In 1945, the Nazis went to the Moon. In 2018, they are coming back.”

Iron Sky. It's a sci-fi comedy. I just hope they have awesome goggles.


[via W. Ellis; interesting for this reason, though most assuredly not the only reason]

Last night, I went to the city's televised Mayoral candidate debate in the Bing Crosby Theatre (formerly the Metropolitan Performing Arts Centre). It was interesting, and had all the pomp of something important. That's about as big as it gets in the City of Spokane. I sat there and typed a liveblog transcript with commentary for just about that full hour, ramming out notes. I had turned the screen backlight off, and so there're a tremendous number of typos. Or, maybe, not as many as I would have thought.

Things that were interesting: The number of somewhat-well-known Spokane people. The Fifty-or-so firefighters sitting just in front of me The sort who are known to locals, but not to people an hour outside of the city (I think Doug Clark was in front of me). Also interesting were how current Mayor Hessian talked for a long time and the City Council Member and candidate Mary Vernor was a little snippy, snarky, and short towards Hessian. Technically, though, they both spoke in long, complex sentences that didn't really mean anything. However, that was also how the questions posed to the candidates were phrased. Yay for politics.

Another thing was brought up was the removal of Safety resource officers from schools (resource officers were the cops who hung out at school; at my highschool was a tall, black, ridiculosly-awesome officer by the name of Johnson). This removal was a thing I didn't know had happened.

And of course, this being Spokane, the subject of the River Park Square was brought up. As if that needs to be dredged up for the seven-millionth time.

And, there were references to a new plan of some kind, put forth by Hessian. It had the term "Expo '74" in the title. Seriously, Spokane? Yeah, I know we got a cool park, a new International Airport out at Geiger feild (callsign GEG, with one of the most poorly-designed landing strips ever), and a cool parking garage out of this, but that was 33 years ago. I think it's time we got over it.

What is it with Spokane and Parking Garages?

An interesting bit about the design of interfaces on Soviet calculators. The design of the calculators we use every day was not always a given--it took time and thought.

Here is the keyboard of the C3-07 calculator. This was a very surprising calculator, especially because of its keyboard and display. As it is can be seen in the image, the calculator combined not only the functions [+=] and [-=], but also the multiply-divide functions [X -:-]. Try to guess how to multiply and to divide in this calculator. A hint: the calculator does not recognize two sequential keystrokes on the same key, only one keystroke is possible for each key. The answer is no less than surprising: to multiply, say 2 by 3, it is necessary to press the following keys [2] [X-:-] [3] [+=], while to divide 2 by 3, the following sequence is applied: [2] [X-:-] [3] [-=]. The addition and subtraction is made in a similar way (as the one applied in the B3-04 calculator) that is, to perform the difference 2 - 3 the following sequence is used: [2] [+=] [3] [-=].

Others among the calculators use an input system called Reverse Polish Notation …

Once the first number is entered, pressing the input key pushes the number into the stack , then the second number is entered, and only then the required operator key is pressed. The stack in this calculator consists of three registers - X, Y and Z.

Soviet Calculators History [Museum of Soviet Calculators via WebZen]



Also of note, supervillian and criminal mastermind Carmen Sandiago has been found.

A bit early to-day. Cool things. Go.

Shooting Stars (A Canadian Astronaut talks about poop in space--it's not really that disgusting).

[via]


And then, Moustache Monday.

Two days ago, October 6th, was the 91st anniversary of the British army’s decision to revoke the standing order that stated that all military men must maintain a moustache. A sad day in the annals of history and, perhaps, an explanation for Britain’s fall from grace as a world power.

What's weird is how there is a running inside joke about this within several groups of friends. It's mostly this (the macro is the joke):

Mostly, though, the joke is that we put the hands up as if grabbing a handlebar which is also a moustache.

In a tongue-in-cheak gesture, I have created a SCAC community. Join in the irony of it. Just post whatever.

scaclub


Also, I miss Firefox.