Snowflake Patterns

Cut your own

You can create your own cutout snowflakes and the down load the patterns.









Pinterest.com - snowflake drawing easy


See all Topics

Numbers in Persective

Visual concepts

"This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on.

This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs.

As with any large artwork, their scale carries a vital part of their substance which is lost in these little web images. Hopefully the JPEGs displayed here might be enough to arouse your curiosity to attend an exhibition, or to arrange one if you are in a position to do so.

The series is a work in progress, and new images will be posted as they are completed, so please stay tuned."

Building Blocks, 2007
16 feet tall x 32 feet wide in eighteen square panels, each sized 62x62".

Depicts nine million wooden ABC blocks, equal to the number of American children with no health insurance coverage in 2007.

chris jordan, Seattle


See all Topics

Tuva or Bust

Richard Feynman's Last Journey

By Ralph Leighton
ISBN 0-393-32069-3
W.W.Norton & Company, Inc. 2000, 1991

Tuva or Bust

There has been a lot made of the PowerPoint contribution to the failure of the Challenger shuttle (see Edward Tufte.)

Before that was the Columbia disaster. Richard Feynman found the problem with the "O" rings, He too complained about PowerPoint like presentations:

"Then we learned about bullets — little black circles in front of phrases that were supposed to summarize things. There was one after another of these little goddamn bullets in our briefing books and on the slides."

This book however is about something altogether different.

As a stamp-collecting boy always fascinated by remote places, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman was particularly taken by the diamond-shaped stamps from a place called Tannu Tuva. He hoped, someday, to travel there. In 1977, Feynman and his sidekick — fellow drummer and geography enthusiast Ralph Leighton — set out to make arrangements to visit Tuva, doing noble and hilarious battle with Soviet red tape, befriending quite a few Tuvans, and discovering the wonders of Tuvan throat-singing. Their Byzantine attempts to reach Tannu Tuva would span a decade, interrupted by Feynman's appointment to the committee investigating the Challenger disaster, and his tragic struggle with the cancer that finally killed him. Tuva or Bust! chronicles the deepening friendship of two zany, brilliant strategists whose love of the absurd will delight and instruct. It is Richard Feynman's last, best adventure.

Quote

"Sure enough, occupying a notch northwest of Mongolia was a territory that could well once have had the name Tannu Tuva.
"Look at this," remarked Richard, "The capital is spelled K-Y-Z-Y-L."
"That's crazy," I said. "There's not a legitimate vowel anywhere!"
"We must go there," said Gweneth.
"Yeah!" exclaimed Richard. "A place that's spelled K-Y-Z-Y-L has got to be interesting."

More Tuva:
Tuva Movies and Sounds
Friends of Tuva

Also:
Listen to the music of Tuva on this CD. Willie Nelson is on one track, but it does demonstrate two toned throat singing:

Tuva Throat Singing

Here's another great Tuva story:

Genghis Blues

" Paul Pena is a blind San Francisco blues singer who has played with the likes of John Lee Hooker and Jerry Garcia (he also penned "Jet Airliner," which Steve Miller covered). One night while listening to his shortwave radio, he picked up a Radio Moscow broadcast and heard the mesmerizing, gutteral sound of throat singing, which is peculiar to Tuva's region of upper Mongolian. Enthralled, he became a master of this obscure art form. Enter Friends of Tuva, a curious group that included Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, who likewise had become fascinated with Tuva. In 1993 they sponsored a San Francisco appearance by Tuvan singers. Pena was in the audience and met with the singers afterward. Pena so impressed the Tuvans that he was encouraged to come to Tuva and participate in its annual festival competition. Genghis Blues chronicles this incredible journey."

See all Topics

Learn to Draw

No match cover required

Do you want to learn how to draw? Now you can online! Learn how to draw like an artist, from a professional artist. Begin by learning the fundamentals of drawing with easy to follow interactive instruction.

Learn how to draw a person and make it actually look like the person! Take drawing people further and learn how to draw a caricature of a person!

• DRAWING BASICS
  You don't know how to draw? Begin learning how to draw.
  
  
• DRAWING PEOPLE
  You know how to draw, but you can't draw people.
  
  
• DRAW CARICATURES
  You want to draw funny people, but you don't know how?

LearntoDraw.com


See all Topics

A Way Cool Paint-Picker

Just slap it on

If you have decided to paint your home, or just this inside of the downstairs coat closet, the Behr paint people have a neat tool.

Color Smart

You still have to slop the paint on yourself, though.

Here are other color generators:

Top 8 Color Tools

EasyRGB matches generated RGB values to paints, inks, etc.


See all Topics

Be a Local Scoble

Photo Walk

Robert Scoble, tech evangelist, has been touting the fun of Photowalking. Getting together with a group of like-minded people to just walk around and take pictures.

Robert has made a number of videos that you can see on his blog The ScobleShow.

Locally Kevin Freitas, a web developer and community supporter, solicited participation in a Tacoma area walk.

Since digital film is free. After you've got a camera, why not set a walk up in your city?



The results of our stroll can be seen at theses links:

• Tacoma Photo Gang - Shot da Tideflats
  
• Tacoma Photo Gang on Flickr
  
  
• Tacoma Foto Gang Muvee
  
  
• Waterfront shots



See all Topics

Color Blind

Be seen by all

Books on web design warn against using the colors red and green.

One out of twenty people have problems with some form of color blindness.

Here is a site that will let you check your web pages. You will be able to see the page as it appears to someone with one of the three main types of color deficit.

Vischeck

Normal



Deuteranope color blindness





Colorblind Web Page Filter


How do things look to Color Blind People


Web Colors


See all Topics

Tag a Collection

Basic naming and tagging protocol

Here are some suggestions about indexing a collection. In this case pictures on Flickr.

Deciding on classifications and inputting the tags is the hard part. Once all of the tags are in place your collection is searchable, and you can make sets based on any of the criteria used.


EvilMadScientist.com


See all Topics

Sgt. Pepper

If you're old enough

The Oxford Dictionary presents an interactive version of the cover.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography


See all Topics

Type Design

Basic ideas

Sketches explaining some basic issues in type design.



TypeWorkshop.com


See all Topics

Hot Knots

Tied Up?

The KnotPlot Site
By Rob Scharein

"Knot theory is a branch of algebraic topology where one studies what is known as the placement problem, or the embedding of one topological space into another."

The site includes a collection of knots.



You can, also, download a program called KnotPlot to develop your own knots


Click to see more moiré knots.

Animated Knots

Other nots:

Ripley's Believe it or not!


See all Topics