Gran Turismo

Draft 0 (unfinished)

Just to make sure there was nothing horribly wrong with the general layout. The photo is of a couple of toy cars, that's been color matched to another photo, then converted to CMYK, then color shifted a couple ways (more yellow, more red) then shifted again, which set some green in the pavement, which I think looks nice.

Thanks to AndyB72 for the photo; here's the photo I shifted the color towards, twice, and the original photo.

Draft 1

Here's the first completed draft. Haven't heard back yet on this one, so I figured I'll put them up as I work on them. I think I've put everything that needs to be on, on, so hopefully there are only minor things to change, if anything.

Draft 2

Well, so much for minor changes. Since this needs to get finalized this morning (2/10) I don't think I should do a total layout reworking, and I still like parts of it. The smaller text was just too hard to read over the toy F-1 car, so It needed a darker (and lighter) background. Hence the move down. I also changed the font from Helvetica to Myriad, to match the previous posters. Helvetica worked at the bigger point size in the program, but I don't think so well once it shrunk. It's more consistent thin was as well.

• M-Pact - [2 #02] Without Your Love
• Basement Jaxx - [Rooty #08] Get Me Off
• Milt Jackson - [Ain't But a Few of Us Left #05] If I Should Lose You
• Reich, Steve - Electric Counterpoint I
• bluegrass at the Trident

Trois beaux oiseaux du Paradis

Haunting, and sad, but beautiful; especially so with Ravel's music.

Trois beaux oiseaux du Paradis, (Mon ami z'il est à la guerre) Trois beaux oiseaux du Paradis Ont passé par ici. Le premier était plus bleu que ciel, (Mon ami z'il est à la guerre) Le second était couleur de neige, Le troisième rouge vermeil. Beaux oiselets du Paradis, (Mon ami z'il est à la guerre) Beaux oiselets du Paradis, Qu'apportez par ici? J'apporte un regard couleur d'azur. (Ton ami z'il est à la guerre) Et moi, sur beau front couleur de neige, Un baiser dois mettre, encore plus pur. Oiseau vermeil du Paradis, (Mon ami z'il est à la guerre) Oiseau vermeil du Paradis, Que portez-vous ainsi? Un joli cœur tout cramoisi … (Ton ami z'il est à la guerre) Ah! je sens mon cœur qui froidit … Emportez-le aussi. Maurice RavelTrois Chansons №2, 1914

The text was written (I assume) In the very first year of WWI (1914), and notably, the colors of the three birds match those of the French, English, Russian flags, the nations of the Triple Entente (though I doubt any flag but France's played into the color choice), and later, purely coincidentally, that of the United States, who didn't join the alliance until 1917.

Note that many sellers of the music online erroneously refer to the author of the text as Paul Painlevé, to whom the piece was dedicated. His name appears in the place traditionally reserved for the author, but clearly marked à Paul Painlevé, while on the cover of this edition (the same edition sold by these misleading merchants) is clearly marked Palroles et Musique de Maurice Ravel.

From Glenn Watkins' Proof Through the Night: Music and the Great War:

…[I]t is the central Trois Beaux Oiseaux du Paradis that Ravel made his most unambiguous reference to the conflict. Dedicated to Paul Painlevé, a renowned Sorbonne professor of mathematics who in 1910 had obtained the first parliamentary grant for aviation and who would later become minister of war, prime minister, and finally minister of aviation, the piece paints a loving textural picture that is clearly geared to a nation newly thrust into a world conflagration. The text begins with the soprano announcing that Trois beaux oiseaux du Paradis (Three lovely birds from Paradise) have flown by, but she is immediately interrupted with a line the at becomes a refrain: Mon ami z'il est à la guerre (My belov'd is to the fighting gone). The three birds are then identified: Le premier était plus bleu que ciel (The first was bluer than Heaven's blue); Le second était couleur de neige (The second white as the fallen snow>; Le troisième rouge vermeil (The third was wrapt in bright red glow). The first (sung by a tenor), brings a glance of azure, and the second (sung by a contralto) leaves a kiss on the beloved's white brow. The third bird (a bass), when asked what it brings, offers Un joli cœur tout cramoisi (A faithful heart all crimson red). The refrain of the beloved who has gone off to war appears once more. The soprano then concludes, Ah! Je sens mon cœur qui froidit… Emportez-le aussi (Ah! I feel my heart growing cold… Take it also with thee).

The English translation by Mme Swayne St.-René Taillander was provided along with the French in the original 1916 edition published by Durand, who that year also published Debussy's Noël des enfant qui n'ont plus de maisons with an English translation by the same translator. In both compositions the symbolism was intentionally easy to read. In Ravel's work the colors of the three birds are a metaphor for the French flag as well as heaven or paradise (blue), purity (white), and sacrifice (red), an dthe poem's parenthetical refrain (My belov'd is too the fighting gone) refers insistently to the price of war.

Birds, especially swallows and nightingales, had long been a symbols of hope, but never more so than in the period between the Franc-Prussian conflict and world War I, during which few songs were more popular thanL'oiseau qui vient de France. When a German dirigible made a forced landing at Lunéville in 1913, a parody version, Voilà /'Zepp/lin qui vient et France, made it's appearance. The imagery of flight and wings introduced by ravel in the first stanza also invites recall of the common interest of both composer and dedicatee in the new aerial dimension of war. Painlevé had been the first Frenchman to fly with Wilbur Wright in 1908, and the next year he had created the first course in aeronautical mechanics at the École Aéronautique. Then, in the first weeks of the war, Ravel approached him as a reference in an attempt to find appointment as a pilot in the French air corps.

The simplicity of the text and the repetitious quality of the music, both of which court a conspicuous naïveté, establish a mood that is at once chaste and melancholy and stoke the nationalist fires in a sure but quiet manner. The closing stanza of Ravel's song brings a sudden frisson with the soprano's Ah backed by a chorus that enters fpp (bouche fermée) as the mounting implication of the allegory's refrain is brought to a soft but chilling end. If Ravel's voice is somewhat quieter than that of many other composers in their early war pieces, the fact that ravel wrote his own texts, as Debussy did for his Noël, openly advertises the composer's personal involvement.

Glenn WatkinsProof Through the Night: Music and the Great War

The other two pieces in Trois Chansons are fun, but not nearly as wrenching as the middle movement; they're much more difficult though, which is fun in and of itself.

Prometheus in the Dead Zone

Basic text layout, just to check, and hopefully get any corrections made before any of the other graphics get set around the text. This sort of thing really varies by poster. Sometimes the layout and text are really integral, and sometimes it's very flexible, or anywhere in between. There were only a couple minor changes to the text this time, and no trouble caused.

First final draft. There was a draft 0, with the basic idea, but it looks nearly the same, just less polished.

Final draft. This was one of the faster posters, only 3 or 4 hours of work, instead of the occasional 8 to 10. And, it came out looking pretty good. I appear to have a trend with the translucent boxes extending from the dark pendulum box. I'll have to decide next time whether to stick with that, or try something else. It's pretty distinctive, which is an advantage: the posters are easily identifiable as pendulum posters, as if the black box wasn't indication enough. It came out well though.

• Snow Patrol - [Eyes Open #01] You're All I Have
• Moosebutter - [udder won #13] Hicksville pt. 2
• Herbie Hancock - [Maiden Voyage #05] Dolphin Dance

Pendulum update: new advert

These are the finals for the Daily Camera Ad. One color and one black and white. Simple Enough.

• Steven Isserlis - [Svyati #11] The Hidden Treasure

Accomplice Short a Crime

Tonight I am empty inside. And the result:

Accomplice Short a Crime I like thin soles, to feel the ground, and gusting wind, the howling sound of despair in the air, and cutting frowns; well I'm An accomplice, but there ain't no crime. I like the cold, when it burns my skin, and steals the numbing warmth within, so deep it's seeping, I'm left paper-thin; I'm just An accomplice, but there's been no crime. I like the piercing black of night, the burried faces robbed of sight and hollow, callow, souls in hopeless flight; I'm An accomplice, but an accomplice short a crime.—December 30th, 2008

Room Painting Illustrated

So I finally got pictures of my room, post painting. The colors came out quite well. The sage green is slightly darker than I anticipated, but still quite nice, and the blue, unfortunately, wasn't available in a quart of flat paint, so I ended up with a quart of Matte, which sounds the same but isn't. Slightly shiny. It's all right in the end. I'll make sure to keep an eye on that next time I paint.

This is the south wall. Notice the colors. Lovely, eh?

This is pretty much the only corner my bed will go in, either how it's set up now, or 90° one way or the other. There's really only one place for nearly every piece of furniture in my room, excepting one bookcase.

The north wall. Despite being on one of the colder rooms in the apartment, I would think anyway (just slightly better than the northeast corner (which we don't have)), either my room perpetually overheats, and except when it's below 30 or so, I try and leave my window cracked to keep at a reasonable temperature, or I am just a mini-furnace. Either way, it's warm, despite being on the north side of the building.

Books! And CDs! And movies! My room has 10 wall surfaces (count, you can see, or at least infer, all of them in the pictures), 4 the dark blue, and 6 the green/brown combo.

Next time I think I may try a warmer brown and an orangeish yellow, with a dark green accent, just for interest. I think they're both somewhat fitting, and I'm not sure I'll ever really like a white room again.

Supper Club Thanksgiving

So it's been a while since I've posted, and two weeks from the event, but I'm finally getting around to putting the pictures that Monica took of the Supper Club just-pre-thanksgiving festival dinner.

Appetizers and soup. Pictured, starting left and going clockwise around the table, are Greg, Cassiope, Billy, Faye, Jessie, Alice, Ben, Me, and Grace.

You'll notice the motley assortment of dishes and glassware that we had to use. Thirty years of accumulating plates does not lend itself to a consistent tableware setting. Even if we'd used Jessie's glass set, we still would have needed more plates, as there were 17 of us.

Pictured, starting left and going clockwise around the table, are Lillian, Greg, Alexander, Cassiope, Billy, Faye, Jessie, Alice, Me, Grace, and Alex.

More appetizers. We couldn't all fit at my parents' dining room table, but there was a kitchen table as well, so we just rearranged ourselves to combine the tables. It was a banquet!

Me, serving soup. Aren't I charming?

I had soup serving duty, as one of the hosts (Jessie and Monica, not pictured anywhere, as she was taking these), so here I am serving fantastic vegetable soup out of a whole roast pumpkin. My food-service experience ladling endless quantities of soup, pasta sauce and other semi-liquidy things to giant numbers of Girl Scouts served me well here. There was also a nice, communal bowl-passing ritual that people puzzlingly tired of after the second or third time around. Pansies. Also, you'll notice I gave myself a haircut. Shiny.

Main courses. Pictured, Cassiope, Billy, Faye and Jessie.

The main course was huge. Roast chicken and duck, bread salad, roasted beets, mashed potatoes, a green salad, cranberry sauce, Szechuan Chicken and tofu, I believe, meatballs with a Greek yogurt-cucumber-cilantro sauce, and probably a couple other things that I can't remember off the top of my head. Remind me in the comments!

Food Coma. Pictured, Grace, Billy, Faye, Alice, Jessie, and I think that's Alex's forehead there in the corner.

There was a apple-pecan tart, a struesel-topped pumpkin pie, and pecan tartlets. This phase, I might add, started somewhere around 8 o'clock, after the appetizers started around 4 or 4:30. This was a long meal. And Fantastic.

The other people attending who didn't make it into the pictures were Monica, previously mentioned, Maddie, who must have been hiding behind me, and my parents, Ron and Suzanne, who were at the photo-taking end of the table. Also, my dad kept leaving to watch football, of the American variety; he's not too big on crowds.

Fun was had by all, much food was had by all; I declare it a success!

There was an amusing divide between the dining-room and music-room end of the table, where the dining room, containing my parents, both Alexes, Greg and Lillian, Grace, Me, and Cassiope, ended up discussing art and politics, and the other end, with everyone else, talking about sex. Go figure.

Downwind faster than the wind, part 2 link

They post, you decide. Via Boing Boing.

Over a year ago on Boing Boing, I linked to this video from a guy who made a propeller-powered vehicle that he claimed could travel downwind faster than the wind. Some people think it was a hoax, and some don't.

In Make Vol. 11, Charles Platt made a miniature model of the vehicle and came to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a wind-powered vehicle that can travel faster than the speed of the wind.

Now there's a new video on YouTube (above) that claims it is possible to sail directly downwind faster than the wind (aka DDFTTW). You can read heated discussions about the video and its claims at Makezine, the Mythbusters Fan Club discussion board, and Randi.org. The creator of the video, spork33, hopes that the Mythbusters folks will attempt to replicate the experiment.

I find the demonstration rather convincing, but my physics is so lame that I have no idea if this is theoretically possible. I must say that the debate over at Boing Boing is rather heated, yet full of snark:

That looked like a dangerous fork/spoon hybrid to me. These guys clearly don't hesitate to mess with things mankind was not meant to.

Matt Jarpe#4, December 1, 2008 7:35 PM

No! NO! NOOO! The sky can't be blue! It's not blue until you prove it in a double blind study!

Antinous#8, December 1, 2008 7:43 PM

I don't think there is anything wrong with sailing faster than the wind if you want to.

Pyros#13, December 1, 2008 7:46 PM

And, fantascically:

first Ecclesiastes: Has happen? Gunna be agin. Nuthing new undur teh sunz.10 Kitteh can not sez "OMFGZ sumthing new!" is jus REPOST!.11 New kittahz 4gitz old kittahz, new kittahz 4gitd bai even newer kittahz.

Takuan#39, December 1, 2008 9:02 PM

Pictures of You: Images from Iran link

Via a post on Boing Boing, Sepideh Saremi [from the parsarts.com blog] has a post up about Colorado-based artist Tom Loughlin. His portraits of Iranians inside Iran are featured in an installation project currently traveling across the US, Pictures of You: Images from Iran.

Pars Arts: The photos in Pictures of You are printed on translucent silk. You’ve written that the silk is intended to allow viewers to see each other as well as the photographs, and to remind them that “something beautiful is in jeopardy.” How have viewers reacted to Pictures of You?

Tom Loughlin: There have been a wide variety of reactions. In fact, the one commonality seems to be that no one is indifferent. Everyone seems to have a powerful response to the show.

So far, the overwhelming majority of responses have been positive. Viewers thank us for putting a human face on Iran, and many of them have powerful emotional responses. It’s quite amazing for me as an artist to see people emerging from the installation in tears, or emptying their pockets into our donation boxes because they want to see the show travel to other venues.

We have had a variety of negative responses as well. At our installation in Denver, we were picketed by a Christian group that wanted to express the view that Muslims were going to hell. Interestingly, they all agreed that the subjects of my photographs looked like very nice people. At the same installation, we had a visitor tell us that he wanted to go and get dynamite and destroy the artwork. One of our staff members engaged him in conversation about the show, and within ten minutes he had changed his mind completely.

I would love to go see that, if it's in Colorado somewhere.

• The Avett Brothers - [Emotionalism]
  • Die Die Die
  • Shame
  • Paranoia in B-flat Major
  • The Weight Of Lies
  • Will You Return
  • The Ballad Of Love And Hate
  • Salina
  • Pretty Girl From Chile
  • All My Mistakes
  • Living Of Love
  • I Would Be Sad
  • Pretty Girl From San Diego
  • Go To Sleep
  • Hand-Me-Down Tune

CheezeFest

The current front-runner for worst holiday music is Marshals.

Just thought you'd like to know.

Whiskey in the Jar link

Irish Session, Sunday nights at Conor O'Neil's.

As I was going over the far famed Kerry mountains I met with Captain Farrell and his money he was counting I first produced me pistol, and then drew forth me sabre, Sayin' Stand and deliver, for ye are a bold deceiver! Musha ring dumma do damma da Whack fall the daddy oh Whack fall the daddy oh There's whiskey in the jar! I counted out his money, and it made a pretty penny I put it in me pocket and I took it home to Jenny She sighed and she swore that she never would deceive me but the devil take the women, for they never can be easy (Chorus) I went into my chamber, all for to take a slumber I dreamt of gold and jewels and for sure it was no wonder But Jenny drew me charges and she filled them up with water Then sent for Captain Farrell to be ready for the slaughter (Chorus) It was early in the morning, just before I rose to travel Up comes a pack of footmen and likewise Captain Farrell I first produced my pistol, for she stole away me rapier But I couldn't shoot the water so a prisoner I was taken (Chorus) Now some men take delight in the drinking and the roving And others take delight in the hurley and the bowling But I take delight in the juice of the barley, And courting pretty fair maids in the morning bright and early (Chorus) If anyone can aid me, 'tis my brother in the army If I can find his station, in Cork or in Killarney And if he'll go with me, we'll go roving near Kilkenny And I sure he'd treat me better than my own lass sporting Jenny (Chorus) Musha ring dumma do damma da Whack fall the daddy oh Whack fall the daddy oh There's whiskey in the jar!

Adam Smith, disproved link

Via Polymeme, an blurb on the New York Times Economix blog about ants and specialization:

Adam Smith, in his famous pin factory description, wrote that labor specialization improves productivity. He should have specified which species he was referring to.

A new paper finds that ants that specialize are no more productive than ants that don’t. The author, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona named Anna Dornhaus, studied how efficiently rock ants completed their tasks of brood transport, collecting sweets, foraging for protein and nest-building. An ant was considered more specialized the more it concentrated its work on one particular task.

She found that the ants that specialized in these tasks did not perform them more efficiently than ants that remained “generalists,” and in some cases performed their tasks less efficiently. Her conclusions:

My results indicate that at least in this species, a task is not primarily performed by individuals that are especially adapted to it (by whatever mechanism). This result implies that if social insects are collectively successful, this is not obviously for the reason that they employ specialized workers who perform better individually.

A hat tip goes to the myrmecological Mark Thoma.

Catherine Rampellhttp://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/, November 20, 2008, 6:30 am

Photo from Flickr: ant macro by HOOKSM.

While specialization may lead to increased production, I can't imagine liking doing one thing for the rest of my life. As Robert Heinlein said:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.