Results tagged “projects”

Back in 2009, I wrote about Mertgart, my notional, vertically integrated, lambic beer. At the time, I did a logo for it. Looking at it now, though, I find myself unsatisfied. So I've done a few new logos for Mertgart. It's not there yet, but I'm pleased to have broken the text out of the confines of the bull's eye.

In late August, I took up biking. Prior to that, it had been about eight years since I'd ridden at all. And I had never used a bike as my primary way of getting around. I was a committed pedestrian and public transit user. And then Jack Layton died, which made me have a serious think about where I fit in the city. So I overhauled my bike and started riding.

In the just-over-two months that I've been riding, I've come to understand why cyclists in Toronto are so grumpy. Every day, I ride about five blocks on St. George, a street with a dedicated bike lane. Every day, I find myself having to swerve into car traffic to avoid cars, taxis or delivery trucks parked in the bike lane. I've already had minor accidents caused by misuse of bike lanes. Short of getting a helmet cam or taking up reporting traffic infractions as a hobby, there's not much I can do about that one.

However, there are some issues I can solve for myself. One is the visibility problem. Biking at night or in bad weather, things can get pretty dangerous. After one too many near-doorings, I've decided to make myself into a very bright, moving object. That's where the LED gloves come in. In addition to my front and rear lights, I decided last week that a little extra glow might come in handy. So I spent part of my weekend working on these little beauties.

They're a pretty basic pair of gloves, with a few added electronic goodies. There's a bright, white LED sewn onto each finger, near the lowest knuckle. The LEDs, as well as the conductive thread wiring, are covered in silicone to protect them from the elements.

Power is supplied by a battery pack sewn onto the underside of the wrist, where it doesn't get in the way. .

Several months later than anticipated (but good things are worth waiting for), my Libre Graphics magazine colleagues and I have finally released Libre Graphics magazine issue 1.3. And it's pretty great. I think it may well be the nicest one yet. There's some beautiful layout work, the cover is just plain incredible and our guest editors did a brilliant job of finding appropriate people to write on the topic, "Collaboration, collaboratively." Mosey over to libregraphicsmag.com to check it out. (Oh, and we've prettied up the website to match the issue, something we'll be continuing for future issues, too.)

At Libre Graphics Meeting this year, I delivered what I think of as a eulogy for the Open Colour Standard. As I finish the round of work that I've been doing on it for the last two years, it's worth looking at what the issues with the research and development of a grassroots physical colour standard have been. With a pile of new and exciting responsibilities on my plate, and a new research direction, I don't see Open Colour going very far in the next four years or so, unless someone else does the moving on it. So, linked here, the video of my eulogy for Open Colour.

Given that I've been working on the Open Colour Standard for two years, it's easy to assume (if you're not as intimately involved with it as I am) that it's not really going anywhere. The good news is that that couldn't be farther from the truth. It's just that the physicality of the project, by necessity, makes it pretty darn complicated and time consuming.

However, in the spirit of dispersing some of the apparent vapourousness, I'm going to share some pictures of what's happening right now, in my ad hoc laboratory. Since the big task right now is coming up with a good foundational set of colours for a couple of different applications, I've been focusing on acid dye (for animal protein-based textiles and some synthetics) and screen printing ink. Below, some of the tools involved in that development.

I am so very delighted right now. Last night, I picked up half the print run of Libre Graphics magazine issue 1.1. And it looks amazing. Here, for your enjoyment, are some photos of Libre Graphics magazine 1.1 in all its heavy paper, matte finish glory. And if I may say so, I think it looks pretty beautiful. (If you want to order one, click here.)

I'm going to be self-indulgent for a moment. Today, I do not have any exciting ideas or projects to share, any neat graphical thingies. Today, I am going to tell you very briefly about the last two weeks and why I've just spent the last three days sleeping.

A little over two weeks ago, I was in France. In Poitiers, to be precise, attending the most excellent 2010 edition of Make Art. And it was absolutely excellent. I spoke about Libre Graphics Magazine. You can, in fact, see that talk here. Despite being the last talk of the day, there was a pretty astounding amount of energy in the audience. And people were delightfully receptive. So, good. That, for your time keeping records, was the 6th of November.

I spent the 7th and 8th of the month frantically working on the above mentioned Libre Graphics Magazine. Originally slated to be released on the 8th, we decided, for the sake of quality to push the release date back by a couple days. That Wednesday, the 10th, I spent the day in a recording studio, first recording then watching the mixing of the narration for my new (and still not really done) project, When We Were Bigger Than We Are Now, which is a co-production of the National Film Board of Canada and Studio XX. And that's what the remainder of the week was made up of: Libre Graphics Magazine and When We Were Bigger Than We Are Now.

By the 16th, Libre Graphics Magazine 1.1 was out and ready to go, with the PDF off to the print shop, too. I spent a large chunk of the 17th working on publicity for that, which had some pretty good yields. We got mentioned on LWN.net, which was a truly great thing.

On the 18th, When We Were Bigger Than We Are Now launched at the HTMlles festival. Awesome.

The 19th and 20th, I slept, because a nasty cold decided it was time to catch me up. Today, though, I'm back at it, getting ready to talk about When We Were Bigger Than We Are Now again, tomorrow. So I'm making slides. Which I'll post later. They'll be pretty.

And that, my dear blog, is why I've been so absent.

And it's amazing. A more accurate title for this post would be something like "Libre Graphics Magazine issue 1.1 now available," but that lacks an element of fun.

If you haven't been looking for the last three months, you may not have noticed that something really neat was happening. That something really neat is called Libre Graphics Magazine (although the official title, for the benefit of those wishing to look it up in WorldCat or something, is just Libre Graphics, or by numbers, ISSN 1925-1416 Libre Graphics (Print) and ISSN 1925-1424 Libre Graphics (Online), something I'm still very excited about.) and it is, as the title might suggest, a magazine devoted to Free/Libre Open Source Software art, design and graphics.

So we've finished it. That we is Ana Carvalho, Ricardo Lafuente and myself. And frankly, we're pretty damn proud of what we've managed to do. So I invite you to take a look at it. It's available in PDF in two different levels of quality, as well as for sale at the minimal price of $12(CAD) for this issue, $45 (CAD) for an annual subscription (that's four issues) or $100 (CAD) for a supporter subscription. You can find the downloads and the purchasing options at libregraphicsmag.com.

Below, some pictures of my favourite bits.

As you may know, I'm currently running around like a maniac, trying to get issue 1.1 of Libre Graphics Magazine out the door. And a lot of the stuff involved in doing that is convincing other people to take it as seriously as the community board, the rest of the editorial team and I do. Which means that lots of people want things like distribution plans, financial breakdowns, explanations of editorial procedures, and so on. We have a repository with our working documents in, we have an entry of the Create wiki, as well as a production wiki of our own (which, I should caution you, is still very much in its early stages). But for some things, a blog is best. It shows what's happening right now. And it shows that we really are chugging along. So there's a blog. I thoroughly encourage anyone and everyone to look at it. Because there's going to be some pretty cool stuff on it in the coming days, as we barrel forward towards an increasingly short deadline. The blog can be found at this slightly complicated address: http://libregraphicsmag.com/libre_graphics_magazine_blog/progress_blog/

Way way back, in the mists of computation history, computers were mostly female. They were women who computed. A little later, machines got the job. Because they also computed, we called them computers, too. And when we started doing that, computers used punch cards or were hard-wired for specific tasks. They had physical switches and vacuum tubes giving out instructions. Then, it was magnetic tapes, hard drives, optical disks.

Around the middle of the twentieth century, we started using software to program our computers. Except it wasn't really a ware. Mostly, computers were bought by large institutions, universities and research centres. People who needed to do very serious calculations bought computers. The programs weren't thought of as something worth selling. They were specific things that the people who owned computers wrote for themselves. They might have someone on staff to write programs for the computer, or they might hire someone in to do it. Either way, the great big computers were expensive and the little programs were not. So the programs didn't matter much. But they were useful, so people traded them. And if I gave you my program, you could change it, too. Because you could see how I'd told my computer what to do. 
 
Eventually, computers got a little cheaper. And when computers got cheaper, more people started buying them. Not just big institutions with buildings full of researchers, but people more like you and me. These computers came with some programs. But getting more programs was a little tougher. One person doesn't have the money to hire a programmer to write programs. I could write one myself, which is what a lot of people did, but then again, I might not have a lot of time on my hands to do that. So a new option sprang up. Someone would invest some time into writing a program that they thought would be useful to lots of people. Then, they'd sell that program to as many people as they could. That's how software became something you could buy. 
 
This, of course, didn't stop people from wanting to keep on doing what they had been doing, which was copying and sharing. Needless to say, the people who were selling programs didn't like this trading very much. There was one young man who was particularly bothered by it. He'd written a program that had turned out to be quite popular. He was bothered that lots of people, instead of buying it from him, got it the way they always had before, by trading with their friends. He didn't like this one bit. So he wrote an angry letter to a computer hobbyist magazine, making his case to the traders.
 
A couple years after that one young man wrote his letter, another man was having a problem. This was a problem born of a distinction. Programs are made of code. There are two types of code: source code, which is the stuff that humans can read, and object code, which can mostly only be read by computers. This man having the problem was an academic type, very much used to the idea of sharing and modifying. He had a printer, but it wasn't working properly. What he wanted was to look at the program controlling the printer, at its code, to fix the problem and make it work better. But that wasn't possible, the people who made the printer only sent along its object code. This made the man very grumpy. He knew, because he was a good programmer, that if he could read the code, he'd be able to solve his problem. This, for him, was a tipping point. He didn't want to have to deal with programs that he wasn't able to change. He wanted to be self sufficient and to solve his problems himself. 
 
So, fed up, he wrote something too. He wrote a manifesto, explaining why it was important to have the freedom to see and modify code. With his manifesto, he started a movement, because other people felt the same way. They thought that the freedom to modify and examine was fundamental to software. The man who wrote the manifesto started working on an operating system of his own. When you think of an operating system, you may think of Windows or Mac OS or even Linux. The man with the printer trouble and the manifesto started his work before any of those others really existed. The problem, though, was that he never managed to finish it. He lost the race. And other operating systems, ones that didn't show off their source code, became dominant. That's what happened in our world.
 
In another world, things went a little differently. In that world, no one paid much attention to the young man with the angry letter. Instead, they kept on copying and sharing, the way they always had. When the man with the printer came along, he got a lot more attention than he did in our world. And there were a lot more people there to lend a hand when he started writing his own operating system. With all those extra helping hands, he finished it. And it began to dominate. Because people could look at the source code, it was adapted for all kinds of different computers. And because people used it and were enthusiastic about it, they worked on it. So it improved, quite quickly. And because other programmers could see the code, change it and redistribute it, people made their own versions. If one person didn't like the way the operating system worked, she was allowed, without even asking, to take the existing code and make changes. Then the programmer would give it a different name and release it for other people to use and work on.

All of this meant that lots of different operating systems proliferated. Anyone who had the time, interest and skill could make a personal version of the operating system. Any company or institution with special requirements could hire a programmer to make the changes for them. And because of the license allowing people to copy and change, but also requiring them to release their derivative work under a similar license, all those changes wound up out in circulation. Any big company making changes to the software had to release those changes, for the benefit of the rest of the community. 
 
In this other world, even if our computers ran different software, they could still talk to each other just fine. They'd talk to each other on common protocols, written sets of rules, explaining the technical specifications needed to make computers speak the same language. Anyone following those instructions properly could implement the protocol. So, in another world, regardless of what software your computer used, it could still communicate seamlessly with others. 
 
Unfortunately, in the now of that other world, there are some rumblings going on. A large company called The Dacre Group, a private equity firm dominant in retail financing, is starting to hire up programmers. And no one is saying why, not even the people they're contacting. One day, you get the fateful email. They want to hire you for a special project. It pays very well. And you'd do well to accept. When you push them on what the project is, they explain that they can't tell you anything unless you sign a non-disclosure agreement. If you don't do that, they say, they can't tell you. Bothered by this, you decline their offer. But you start looking around, trying to find hints about what's going on. Why would a private equity firm want to hire so many programmers, and on such a secretive basis? So you search.

Libre Graphics Magazine, that exciting venture of which I've written before, is nearing zero hour. Issue 1.1 goes to press in two weeks, with a fine collection of articles, art and other exciting things. The trick about going to press, though, is that it costs money. So we've started a Pledgie campaign. We're aiming for $8000 USD ($8227 CAD in today's prices) so that we can print a thousand copies and also send them off to events like FOSSASIA. Hit the Pledgie button below if you want to contribute to the cause.

If you can see the image, you're looking at 30 seconds of lovingly hand coded SVG animation. It's the Way, way back from yesterday and a little bit of my short history of computation. Soon (once I hack another 1000 words out of the short history), it'll have narration over top and be a couple minutes longer. For now, it takes some time to load, but is very much worth the wait.

Below: a working image from some animation I'm working on, to go with the intro text from a couple days ago. Text is hand drawn but based on a little bit of the most excellent Linex Abecedario font family.

Below, the introduction to a game I'm working on. I need to shorten it up quite a bit (by about a thousand words), but this is the basic shape. It briefly explains the history of computation in our world, and then extends into the fictional world of the game.

Way back, in the mists of computation history, more than a hundred years ago, there used to be rooms full of ladies called computers. They were called computers because they did just that: they computed. A little later, machines got the job. Because they, like the ladies before them, computed, we called them computers. And when we started doing that, they were mostly hard-wired for specific tasks. They had physical switches and vacuum tubes giving out instructions. Around the same time, we started using punch cards. Then, it was reel-to-reel tapes. Over time, we found many different ways of telling computers what to do. 
 
Eventually, these instructions came to be called programs. Around the middle of the twentieth century, we started using software to program our computers. Except it wasn't really a ware. Lots of companies sold computers. Mostly, those computers were bought by large institutions, universities and research centres. People who needed to do very serious calculations bought computers. The programs weren't thought of as something worth selling. They were specific things that the people who owned computers came up with for themselves. They might have someone on staff to write programs for the computer, or they might hire someone in to do it. The point, though, was that the great big computers were expensive and the little programs were not. So the programs didn't matter much. But they were useful, in their way. So people traded them.
 
Because they were so specialized and because they were largely written by researchers, for a really long time, no one thought to sell them, they just traded. The best bit, of course, was that if I taught my computer how to do something and you wanted your computer to do something similar but not quite the same, you could change my program. Because you could see how I'd told my computer to do it. 
 
Eventually, computers got a little cheaper. And when computers got cheaper, more people started buying them. It wasn't just big institutions with buildings full of researchers. It was people more like you and me, with a little less money on our hands. These computers came with some programs. But if I wanted another program for my computer, how could I get one? One person doesn't have the money to hire a programmer or researcher to come up with programs. I could write one myself, which is what a lot of people did, but then again, I wouldn't necessarily have a lot of time on my hands to do that. A new option sprang up. Someone would invest some time into writing a program that they thought would be useful to lots of people. Then, they'd sell that program to as many people as they could. So software, something which had previously not been for selling, became something you could buy. 
 
This, of course, didn't stop people from wanting to keep on doing what they had been doing, which was copying and sharing. Lots of computer hobbyists still wanted to be able to trade programs, even if they were programs that they had originally bought from someone else. So they kept on doing that. They'd get together and trade, your program for mine. Needless to say, the people who were only selling programs (instead of packaging programs, as a service, with their hardware) didn't like this very much. There was one young man who was particularly bothered by it. He'd written a program that had turned out to be quite popular. He was bothered that lots of people, instead of buying it from him, got it the way they always had before, by trading with their friends. He didn't like this one bit. So what could he do but write an angry letter to a computer hobbyist magazine, making his case to the people trading copies.
 
A couple years after that one young man wrote his letter, another man was having a problem. This problem revolved around an important distinction. Programs are made of code. There are two types of code. There's source code, which is the stuff that humans can read, and there's object code, which can mostly only be read by computers. This man having the problem was an academic type, working at a university, very much used to the idea of sharing and modifying. But he had this printer. And it wasn't working properly. What he wanted was to be able to look at the program controlling the printer, to look at its code, so that he could fix the problem and make it work the way he wanted. But that wasn't possible, because the people who had sold him the printer had decided that they shouldn't let their customers see the source code, the human readable stuff. Instead, they only sent the printer along with its object code. This made the man very grumpy. He knew, because he was a good programmer, that if he could read the code, he'd be able to solve his problem. But he couldn't! This, for him, was a tipping point. He didn't want to have to deal with programs that he wasn't able to change. He wanted to be self sufficient and to solve any problems that might arise with the software. 
 
So, fed up, he wrote something, too. He wrote a manifesto, explaining why it was important to have the freedom to see and modify code. With his manifesto, he eventually started a movement. Lots of other people felt the same way. They thought that the freedom to modify and examine was fundamental to software. The man who wrote the manifesto started working on an operating system of his own. When you think of an operating system, you may think of Windows or Mac OS or even Linux. The man with the printer trouble and the manifesto started his work before any of those others really existed. The problem, though, was that he never managed to finish it. He lost the race. And other operating systems, ones that didn't show off their source code, became dominant. That's just in our world, though.
 
In another world, things went a little differently. In another world, no one paid much attention to the young man who wrote in to the computer hobbyist magazine. Instead, they kept on copying and sharing, the way they always had. He kept on shouting, but no one listened much. A couple years later, when the man with the printer came along, he got a lot more attention than he did in our world. In another world, people were so sick and tired of hearing that first young man's complaints that they jumped on board when the quest for software freedom came around. Which means that there were a lot more people there to lend a hand when the man with the broken printer started writing his own operating system. With all those extra helping hands, he finished it. And it began to dominate. Because people could look at the source code, it was adapted for all kinds of different computers. It worked on everything. And because it was what people were using, and because they were enthusiastic about it, they worked on it. So it improved, quite quickly. And because other programmers could see the code, change the code and redistribute the code, people made their own versions. If one person didn't like the way the operating system worked, he (or she) was allowed, without even asking, to take the existing code and make the necessary changes. Then the programmer would give it a different name and release it into the wild for other people to use and work on. All of this meant that lots of different operating systems proliferated. Anyone who had the time, interest and skill could make a personal version of the operating system. Any company or institution with special requirements could hire a programmer to make the changes for them. And because of that license, which allowed people to copy and change, but also required them to release their derivative work under a similar license, all those changes wound up out in circulation. Any big company making changes to the software had to release those changes, for the benefit of the rest of the community. 
 
In this other world, then, maybe your computer and my computer never had the same software. But that's okay, because they could still talk to each other just fine. They'd talk to each other on common protocols. With protocols, there's a written set of rules, explaining the technical specifications needed to make the protocol work. The neat bit is that anyone who follows those instructions properly can implement the protocol. If we both have a copy of those rules, we can both write conforming programs. By following the common set of rules, we ensure that our computers can communicate. Essentially, a protocol is an open standard. Anyone can see it and implement it. So, in another world, regardless of what software your computer used, it could still talk successfully to my computer.

Now, that didn't happen so much in our world. Sure, it happened for things like email, but not for a lot of other things like files and programs. Because one operating system dominated for so long, people writing programs only wrote their programs for that one operating system. Those programmers followed the rules set out by the owners of the operating system. There's no need for open standards and agreements if all the computers are exactly the same. But in another world, with variety and loads of different operating systems, open standards and protocols dominated. 
 
In this other world that we're talking about, where software freedom was hugely important, where open standards and protocols were the grease that made things work smoothly, where visible code meant infinite possibilities for modification and innovation, the alternate you may know a little more than you do about programming. Not because it's necessary to know how to program in order to use the software (it isn't), but because, believe it or not, it's fun. Because, like the man with the broken printer who started it all, you've maybe realized that by knowing how to program a little, you gain a huge amount of power. By knowing how to program a little, you get to be the one telling your computer what to do and you get to understand why it does what it does when it runs the programs that other people have written. 
 
Unfortunately, in that other world, there are some rumblings going on. A large company called The Dacre Group, a private equity firm dominant in retail financing, is starting to hire up programmers. And no one is saying why, not even the people they're contacting. One day, you get the fateful email. They want to hire you for a special project. It pays very well. And you'd do well to accept. When you push them on what the project is, they explain that they can't tell you anything unless you sign a non-disclosure agreement. If you don't do that, they say, we can't tell you. Well, we could tell you, but we'd have to kill you, hah hah. Scared by this, you decline their offer. But you start looking around, trying to find hints about what's going on. Why would a private equity firm want to hire so many programmers, and on such a secretive basis?

I'm co-chair of this conference. I'll talk more about the conference later. As I do, I've gone and done the most fun stuff first. I've designed the poster for the keynote. And, if I may say so about my own work, I think it's awesome. See below. The one blank, the location of the keynote, is going to be settled quite soon. For those who want to attend, there'll be notice about that closer to the date, in the new year. The website mentioned on the poster isn't live yet. But give me a week. For now, I give you pretty poster.

Exciting things are happening. Libre Graphics Magazine is on the move, with our first numbered issue (1.1) due to come out in November. For now, I've designed a very spare website to house our call for proposals, manifesto and contact information. I'm rather pleased with it. Screen shot below, with the whole thing available at libregraphicsmag.com.

Non-Standard Bodies, which I've posted quite a bit about in recent weeks, is very nearly done. What was a pretty clunky prototype in April is now functioning well and looking good. Today, the job was to pad out the shoulders and crinoline, for the sake of roundness instead of extreme angularity. Tomorrow, we do a (hopefully) final test on the servos.

Next week, we're installing it for a four month run at the Ontario Science Centre, where I fully expect legions of pre-teen boys on field trips to adjust it to the shortest and tightest settings. Still, if they bother to read the statement that goes with it, they'll at least get some idea of how standards impact their lives. In addition, of course, to the silly thrill of being able to mess with clothing fit at a distance.

Below, the dress in full-on nun-mode; partially shortened with one sleeve up and waist tightened; the requisite up-skirt photo of electronic guts; a detail of the newly padded shoulder armour; the back of the dress, when waist is tightened; and a detail of the underside of the skirt, when shortened.

As we know, I'm working on the Open Colour Standard, which is a great big daunting project which fully intends to eat a lot of time. How will I accomplish this while also working on roughly two bajillion other things (at a rough estimate)? It's quite simple: I've turned it into a thesis. It's a win-win situation. I get a degree out of my work and the rest of the world gets the assurance that I'll actually finish the project or suffer certain academic death. This is why I've been basically living in a super secret lab in the basement of a big ugly concrete building for the last eight months, drinking orange juice to ward off the scurvy that would surely otherwise set in from lack of sun. Having done a boatload of preliminary research, I'm now writing the proper thesis proposal which will make the work properly, for serious, official. Below, then, the first draft of one section of the proposal: the introduction to my research question.

The purpose of my proposed thesis is to explore the theoretical, historical and practical underpinnings of the Free/Libre Open Source Software movement, standards, colour and colour standards (especially open ones). Put more practically, the aim is to look at how standards are made, what standards do, what impact they have on professional and institutional practice, what sorts of standards exist, what colour standards are currently in existence and use and how the ideologies and practices of the Free/Libre Open Source Software movement and communities might come to bear on the creation and implementation of professional colour standards.

Put even more practically, the purpose of the proposed research is to look at the processes and problematic practices behind standards, their creation, implementation and use. Further, the research will take a practical turn, in attempting to lay out the groundwork for a new colour standard, one which keeps in mind the needs of users beyond those represented by the normal participants in the standards-setting process. This practical turn, however, is not simply for the sake of creation. Instead, it takes cues from Critical Making and other ideas of reflexive practice. Essentially, its purpose is to better understand the problematics of the standards creation, setting and implementation processes through participation in such processes, although always with a critical eye.

    This proposal offers a brief overview of the history and rationale behind F/LOSS, with background useful in the understanding of the benefit of open standards, protocols and tools. Then, an exploration of literature on what standards are, what uses they serve, how they are made and implemented, what significance they have and what tensions exist in their creation, implementation and existence. Where colour and its related standards are concerned, the review focuses on an overview of common and less common uses of colour, historical and current colour standards, the physical realities of making and viewing colour and finally, the politics of colour. Two theoretical frameworks are approached: Ratto's Critical Making, exploring the value of doing in order to gain understanding, and Star's points on the purpose and concerns of infrastructure. A description of proposed methodology follows, as well as a discussion of limits and ethical concerns which may be associated with the proposed methodology.

Below, progress shots of a rebuild of a mechanical dress. The dress, called Non-Standard Bodies, used to have structural elements made of chicken wire, which was causing shorts. Today, I built a new frame for it, out of Sintra. Built using only a utility knife, heat gun and plastic that softens at a low temperature. The electronics are getting added back in later, once some smaller elements are added to the frame.