Joe Maller: Site Notes Archive - December 2001

December 31, 2001

I will not work tonight. I will not work tonight. I will not work tonight. I will not work tonight. I will not work tonight.

December 19, 2001

Good morning, there is a man with an assault rifle across the street.

Law & Order is filming outside our front window again. A few months ago they shot another scene in the pharmacy downstairs and now they're back. Judging by the size of the production, I'm imagining something big is going down on our little corner. I guess this means I'll have to start watching again.

The friendly, heavily armed policeman on the roof of the truck across the street is being played by Chris.

December 18, 2001

I got a letter from 20th Century Fox because my name is Joe. I quote:

Twentieth Century Fox wants to invite YOU and a guest to a special preview screening of

joesomebody

On Wednesday, December 19 @ 7pm.

This is a screening just for Joes!

I'm not going for any number of reasons. However the screening is Wednesday December 19th at 7pm somewhere in New York City, if anyone wants to impersonate me, or just pretend to be named Joe, call (212) 556-8627 to reserve two seats to the screening. Oh just call anyway. Call and tell them your name isn't Joe and that you found this promotion discriminatory. Call and ask what their name is. Call and tell them you'd love to be there, but your middle name is Phil, and you'll be at the Phil Somebody screening, which is rumored to have a really wild party afterwards.

While I'm on the subject, the boxing glove on the Joe Somebody poster was an afterthought and looks it. First, it was Photoshop'd on to high, so it looks like Tim Allen's hand was amputated. There is quite a bit of padding on the face of a boxing glove which would extend well below the horizontal plane of his right hand, but the glove seems to have been placed on at the natural end of his hand, ignoring any room for padding. In this diagram, the green lines are perspective lines based on Tim Allen's body. The yellow outline is where the boxing glove would have been if he'd been wearing it in the shot., follow the lines forward from his right hand and see where it should have been. Additionally, the lighting is wrong, the glove shadows are further around the glove than the shadows on his shirt and pants, the glove is tied way above his wrist and is positioned at an unnatural angle.

A fundamental fact of visual perspective is that the visible horizon will pass proportionally through every object at the same height no matter how far it is from the viewer. Based on the building behind Mr. Allen and the arrangement of space, he'd have to be 50-60 feet tall. Try looking at the image and forgetting for a second that he has to be human sized, think "giant". Part of the reason for that effect is the photo of the building was taken closer to it's base and looking up, so we're seeing the top of a larger structure distorted towards a vertical vanishing point.

Yes, it's a movie poster and it's not supposed to look real, but there's a difference between effective and sloppy.

Somehow I missed Wired's Autism-Spectrum Quotient quiz last week. (mentioned by Jerry Kindall²⁹ and a whole lotta nothing²⁸ among others) I took the test twice and scored a 27 both times. I suppose this will come back to haunt me someday.

As I was taking the quiz, Michelle said I was probably trying to skew my answers to seem autistic, which I probably was. When I told her my score, she said this just means I'm on the fringe of "super-bizarro people". (good thing she's contractually locked in)

I found the questions overly simplistic (most multiple choice questions are), inverted and misleading. For many of the questions, I would have skipped them or answered in the middle. Below are my notes about specifically annoying questions.

1. I prefer to do things with others rather than on my own

   I do like working alone, I like having several quiet hours to think, and I like the feeling of accomplishment that comes with doing something myself. I also enjoy working with small groups on joint projects. I enjoy cooperating and helping other people accomplish their goals. This also depends on the other people and the task at hand.

11. I find social situations easy

    Depends on the social situation. I can think of many kinds of social situations I enjoy and just as many I don't. This is an ongoing issue with these questions, a general catagory is used in place of a specific event.

12. I tend to notice details that others do not

    So does everyone I work with. It's part of being a visual professional. I could also have answered no, since everyone around me usually notices things too. Or maybe we're just all autistic...

21. I don't particularly enjoy reading fiction

    I could answer that I don't particularly enjoy reading fiction more or less than non-fiction. This question is silly.

24. I would rather go to the theater than to a museum

    Depends on what's at the theater. Usually I'm just annoyed by the legroom, but I usually enjoy the things I choose to see onstage.

32. I find it easy to do more than one thing at once

    Depends which things. I can do twenty things at once if they are related or things I'm interested in. I can't however pay the bills and work on something technical. Multi-taskking is very thematic for me.

35. I am often the last to understand the point of a joke

    I don't get bad jokes. I am usually quick to notice themes in stories.

40. When I was young, I used to enjoy playing games involving pretending with other children

    What else exactly do kids do besides pretend, have board meetings? Itemize lists of company assets? If the question dropped the "with other children" it would be absolutely true. Sometimes I preferred to play alone.

42. I find it difficult to imagine what it would be like to be someone else

    I do speculate on other people's motivations, but I find it difficult because of the complexity of the human mind, experiences and motivations. Does it count to worry about how other people are feeling?

44. I enjoy social occasions

    I enjoy some occasions, but not others. But often I find myself having a good time at a place I was dreading going to. I'm usually excited about getting together with friends, or going places where friends will be, but I've never liked going into a crowd of strangers very much. So how should I have answered? If it were possible, I would have left the question blank.

47. I enjoy meeting new people

    What kind of new people? Would this be a group of people I have something in common with or a group of people who I have nothing in common with. Optomisticallly Yes, I agree, pessimisticallty, they would all be boring...

49. I am not very good at remember people's date of birth

    I'm great at remembering dates but I usually have trouble connecting the date with the day. I don't seem to remember a birthday as a point in time, only a temporal-numeric fact. I answered 3 because I am good at remembering dates, but subtracted from that because I don't connect when the day comes.

One other problem I had was inability to remember which way was agree and which way was disagree, but that's probably just dyslexia.

December 17, 2001

Gameface played at Brownies last night. I've seen them play three or four times, and this was the best set I've been to. It wasn't as crowded as some of their past shows, but they sounded good and people seemed to enjoy the music.

Toward the end of the set the band showed a coherence and energy I haven't seen them play with before. Awkward Age and Pirate Song flowed into each other, darting into solos and improvisations including a few moments of Tom Petty's American Girl. The band's last song was Balance, which they played like a violent mood swing, drifting between anger and regret and finally settling into a calm, exhausted finish. The band left the stage while Jeff stayed on to played a semi-acoustic solo of Everybody Shines, a new song I hadn't heard before.

Many of Gameface's albums are available from Amazon and most have RealAudio(blech) previews. A lot of their stuff is floating around as MP3s, but they're still a small band, so buying their CDs definitely helps them keep playing.

Salmon Rushdie's was once asked who his favorite artists were. "My friends," he said. I agree. I've known Todd and Jeff for 15 years, and I always look forward to seeing them when Gameface plays NYC.

At about 9:50 yesterday morning, someone blasted my webcam with a hose. At least that's the nearest thing I can figure out from the images. Even though it's weatherproof, some water apparently got inside and immediately condensed on the backside of the lens, fogging the image.

Here's the progression of images:

December 11, 2001

Google posted a 20 year list of Usenet milestones. The Internet often seems completely here and now, not so much a device of recorded history as a device of immediate history. Possibly because of this perception, I am fascinated by the dates and events:

• May 1981; first mention of Microsoft
• July 1982, first mention of a CD
• January 1986, first mention of Challenger exploding
• November 1989, first posting from Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall
• March 1993, Marc Andreessen announces Mosaic (Mosaic later became Netscape)

I graduated from Art Center in December of 1993. During my last semester, Bruce and I took a Photoshop (2.0) class taught by Lynda Weinman. About that time, I got myself, my parents and Michelle's parents AOL accounts. I hadn't seen the web yet. Wired magazine had just started and was still incredibly cool, although none of us knew what half the articles were about. In January of the following year, Michelle and I moved to New York City. In early 1994, Bruce and I made illustration portfolios on floppy disks. (link found on MetaFilter)

December 9, 2001

I'm easily obsessed with minutiae*. Today I while working on some more filters, and I found myself wondering about the names of regular polygons (there was a reason). I knew most of them up to 10 and was right about 12 too. This lead to about an hour trying to track down a complete polygon name list with Google. After wading through a lot of "pentagon, hexagon, octagon", which almost universally omitted the seven sided heptagon, I had a pretty complete list going. As I was starting to build a big table, I finally found the following sites by searching for uncommon polygon names like heptadecagon. These sites contain listings of polygon names up to 100 and the naming schemes for polygons with up to 1 million sides:

• Polygon Names
• Naming Polygons and Polyhedra
• Polygon Properties

I prefer the style of naming without the "kai" in the middle as it breaks the vocal rhythm of the series. Apparently the mathematician Johannes Kepler used the "kai" notation, this fact and the ability to easily separate the Greek numerical prefix seem to be making that notation more popular among mathematicians.

To make things more confusing, what are considered the wrong terms for 9-sided and 11-sided polygons seem to be more popular than the preferred terms. Based on Google popularity indexing (number of pages containing the search term) nonagon leads enneagon 1600 to 218, and undecagon leads hendecagon is leading 186 to 160.

While reading about all this stuff, one diversion lead me to Penrose Tiles, which I definitely want to come back to later. They reminded me of one day in fifth grade playing with a set of blue and white cardboard tiles which were either Penrose kites and darts or just equilateral triangles. They had curved blue shapes on them which would line up no matter how the tiles were aligned. I was fascinated with all the possible the shapes and patterns but somehow only got to use them once.

* I can't believe I spelled minutiae right on the first try. Of course it should have a ligature, minutiæ, but as I read recently on splorp, the internet is pushing hard-coded ligatures into the dustbin of history. Did I really just say "dustbin of history"?

December 8, 2001

Last week I received an email from Christine in Maine, her boyfriend lives on Avenue A a few blocks north of me. She asked me if I could point my webcam down towards the sidewalk, so she could see him and he could wave to her. I don't think I've ever met either of them, but her letter made my week.

All of this technology, the cell phones, webcams, and microprocessors. Warm metal boxes with tiny green lights and a tangle of cables. The physical quantification of memory. All to bridge the distance between two people in love.

We're still human and it's still the future.

December 7, 2001

Yesterday I posted a link I found on Jerry Kindall's site. Today I noticed a link back to my site from his stats page (go find it yourself, it doesn't seem to be publicly linked). So, back at jerrykindall.com I see he posted a link to the FXScript Reference.

I've been reading his his site regularly for a while, as it seems we're on a similar wavelength a lot of times. We also tend to cross paths on Metafilter.

Anyway, the linky-lovefest continues.

Installing Linux on Airport. Not using an airport with Linux, actually embedding Linux in the Airport base station's firmware.(found on myAppleMenu.com)

December 6, 2001

Years ago, a few of the folks in Digital's Semiconductor Engineering Group plugged a pickle into the wall. It glowed.

The above quote comes from a site detailing the discovery that, when plugged into a wall outlet, Kimchi regulates electricity as it glows, essentially becoming a light emitting vegetable diode. (found at jerrykindall.com)

The first time I heard about the "Electric Pickle", I nearly passed out laughing. I've never personally witnessed the phenomenon, thankfully someone posted electric pickle photos and a quicktime movie.

Though probably not the origin of the idea, here is one of the earliest electric pickle accounts with an explanation.

Matt Reilly, witness to and publisher of the glowing kimchi page, links to some old web classics. One of my favorites that I haven't seen in a long time is George Goble's home page where he uses liquid oxygen to light (and vaporize) a barbecue grill.

December 1, 2001

I threw together a quick page of Translation Bookmarklets. With these in the toolbar, web pages can be translated in one click.

I really shouldn't have been doing this now, and caught hell for not getting ready for the party tonight. Now I've got to go drink a big coffee and whip myself into a cleaning frenzy.

Notes and Archive thanks to Blogger Someday I'll build my own.