Monthly Archives: July 2011
evolving publication
An excited morning spent on planning the work on a reader for The Libre Graphics Research Unit. This 'evolving publication' gathers existing and commissioned texts, and maybe other materials. With AL + SV we imagine a vibrant collection of open content material shared through collective indexing, annotation and translation. A first installment should be ready [...]
Motion from an odd angle
// // Video Streamer // // a look at motion from an odd angle // // or // // an attempt at resolving these three: // // space = view(time); // // time = change(space); // // view = space + time; // // // ---> interesting patterns emerge when looking at space and time [...]
Nice stories, Asimov, but anyone can do it
WVW is thinking about 'material curiosity' and we both end up reading through The Impact of Science on Society1, a publication based on four public lectures organised by the NASA Scientific and Information Branch in 1985. James Burke: "The main thing, it seems to me, is to remember that technology manufactures not gadgets, but social [...]
(formerly Bootstrap)
In 1962 Douglas Engelbart tied a brick to a pencil. The experiment was part of a research proposal written for the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research. In his text Augmenting human intellect: A Conceptual Framework1 he argues that in light of increasing production, population and complexity, the solvers of tough, critical problems of [...]
Blackboard
Writing technique
I'm working my way through The Stroke: Theory of writing1. In the last chapter on Technique, Gerrit Noordzij talks about his hands for the first time: The fingers are virtually at rest relative to the wrist, the angle between the shaft of the pen and the writing surface is constant and the whole arm is [...]
Software For People
In response to an audience member who complained about a certain WordPress functionality, Matt Mulleweg1 said: "The Software is Wrong, Not the People"2. Shifting the responsibility from People to Software, Mulleweg was applauded for being sensitive to user-demands. "[It] should be the motto for all software companies"3 But with his statement he also confirmed popular [...]
Desktop Summit
Planning a weekend at the Desktop Summit in Berlin, preparing for a mix of toolkit, developer and community tracks: interesting choices of perspective. How do distribution, application and toolkit communities actually work together? How will they/we speak about software? What about Unity?
Listen to this page
"Draw two crossing lines from one edge of a page to another edge. Each division is read out loud by another person." File: frog.ogg Read by participants in the seminar Scripted Reading at the Association for Cultural Studies Summer Institute on Critical Literacies. Thank you Tony, Riet & Ike. Text: The Frog King from Household [...]
Discretion and continuity
PH reports from a long conversation with PM. They have settled on the word-pair 'discretion' and 'continuity' to describe the rigid and yet fluid character of computated lay-out. I'll need to go back to JH and finally pick up on the discussion we had on Code vs. Canvas, and about guessing and aiming.
push that push that
JH: The Inkscape generated patterns work great!! AL: So in the example above the lines are not lines but thin shapes. In this case it might be interesting to import Inkscape generated Postscript and than repeat the pattern with mathematical functions? JH: A ... WOW!!! JH: push that push that
Back to the future
As a way to transition into the Libre Graphics Research Unit, I am browsing through the interview archive at OSP ... transcribing a few still unpublished conversations and re-reading others: Tom Lechner: Laid Out (2011, editing) Claudia Krummenacher: Scribus usability design (2011, editing) John Haltiwanger: ConText (2010, editing) Asheesh Laroia: Inclusion and exclusion (2011, editing) [...]