April 9, 2007 by kirkjobsluder.

Handwriting until recently has been a problem for me.  My fourth grade teacher saw my previous grades on the subject and gave me time to work on a typewriter.  I struggled in high school German because a teacher insisted on handwritten assignments.

About three years ago, I discovered a great book on italic writing and havn’t looked back.  Also reading caligraphy books that focus on fundamental strokes rather than letter shapes has also done a great deal to improve my writing style.  Just my thoughts on how to improve handwriting.
First, get a pen with good flow. Whenever I use a cheap pasty ball-point bic, I feel like I have to fight the pen just to get a good line. Fountain pens are great, if you want to put out $30-100 dollars and can trust yourself with them. Othewise, gel-pens, roller ball, or even fine-tipped art markers are good.

Second, do most of your writing on a good comfortable writing surface. I hate using many lecture-hall flip-out desks because they are too small, the wrong position, and the wrong angle. If you can grab a table, do it.

Spend some time every day practicing zig-zags, loops, and arches. Don’t try to conform to the template suggested by anyone else. Focus on consistency of angle, shape and spacing. If you are bored during a class, scribble out a few lines of zig-zags and loops. Your goal is to develop good muscle memory for the fundamental strokes used to build the letters. IME practicing strokes offers better gain for time invested. You can spend a half-hour working on the lowercase “r,” or you can spend a half-hour working on the short-down-stroke used in ‘agijpqru.’ Counter-clockwise loops are used to build ‘acdegoq.’

Finally, a thing that really helped me improve my handwriting was to not worry about ligatures (light strokes that connect letters). Some advise no ligatures, some styles demand lifting the pen only between words. Personally, I let ligatures appear where they are natural. And use a pen lift where it feels natural.

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April 5, 2007 by kirkjobsluder.

Things have been a bit quick here, one reason I’ve not been doing much writing.

I did whip together a python script for phrase searching using Spotlight. The basic logic behind this is that Spotlight does not do phrase searches for document content. But you can use Spotlight to get a list of a small number of files you want to search, then extract the text content from those files. It’s one of those examples of productive procrastination I do. Download it to a place in your path, run it, and give it a search phrase.

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February 23, 2007 by kirkjobsluder.

A surreal and funny web-comic that shows mastery of the one-panel format. The Book of Biff is one of my latest addictions.

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February 6, 2007 by kirkjobsluder.

Pan’s Labyrinth is a fantasy movie for adults, in a movie industry that often considers fantasy a genre only for children. In that respect it is much more similar to City of the Lost Children, Otesánek, and Brazil than it is to Harry Potter. The film blends a story about wartime resistance, with a fantasy about a girl looking for a missing father.

In 1944, Ofelia travels with her mother to meet her stepfather, the sadistic Capitán Vidal. Vidal is setting a trap for one of the republican resistance cells that continued to fight Franco from the relative safety of the mountains. He invites his wife and Ofelia into the trap out of a desire to attend the birth of his son. His maid and manager of the household, Mercedes, is secretly a spy attempting to protect the resistance, including her brother.

Ofelia escapes into a fantasy world where she discovers she is the lost daughter of the king of the underworld. To open the gateway home, she must succeed at three tasks given to her by an extremely aged fawn (performed by Doug Jones and voiced by Pablo Adan) who appears to grow younger with each appearance. The sound design shines here with the fawn’s movements matching the creaking of dead trees in the wind. The movie progresses in parallel with Ofelia working in secret to complete the tasks given to her, and Mercedes working in secret to deliver critical supplies and information to the resistance.

Vidal is a deceptively simple and brutal ogre. He instigates some of the most brutal violence in the film, and appears to be unfeeling and arrogant. The script only reveals Vidal’s foiled father-quest at the conclusion of the film. The forces that drive Vidal to both deny and attempt to succeed his father are almost too subtle. Perhaps there is a missing scene, or perhaps it’s purposely left quiet.

Although much has been said about the violence of this movie, most scenes did not strike me as worse than a typical episode of CSI. With the exception of a few extremely graphic moments, the film shows much less than you see in the mind’s eye. Likewise, it leaves the conclusions and moral of the story open to the interpretations of the viewer.

It seems that many people have different reactions to this film depending on what you expect going into it. If you walk into the film expecting a full-out fantasy in the same manner as the Henson movie Labyrinth or The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe you will be disappointed. On the other hand if you leave your expectations at the door, you probably will be pleased. The previews seem to be especially misleading.

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January 31, 2007 by kirkjobsluder.

At the moment, reading a fair quantity of the web chatter regarding the newly running Democratic presidential candidates, I’m picking up on a disturbing thread going around. Equal marriage rights (often framed as “gay marriage”) is a “wedge” issue exploited by Republicans to shock people away from voting for Democrats. Therefore, Democratic candidates should avoid taking a position on that issue. After all it’s an issue that only affects a small minority compared to health care or the Iraq War.

Or is it?

I suggest that equal marriage rights is a wedge issue in more ways than one. The “wedge strategy” was admitted by groups advocating Intelligent Design instruction in schools. Once the tip of the wedge, intelligent design, created a crack in public education, it would be easier to press more faith-based curriculum into public schools. ID advocacy groups have neither been adept at hiding this agenda, nor shy about it either.

Likewise, the goal of legislation and constitutional amendments ostensibly intended to hold the line at “gay marriage,” is to open a wedge for challenging a wide variety of case law and policy regarding families, privacy, medical care and insurance. It is foolish to believe that constitutional language that privileges heterosexual marriage will not be used in court cases regarding divorce, private sexual behavior, child custody, contraception and discrimination. Non-discrimination laws and policies could come under attack, as well as education and support services at public schools and universities. Just at with ID advocacy, “marriage defenders” have not been shy about having a more sweeping agenda.

The pressure to roll the clock back is not going to go away, and the effects of these initiatives on family and privacy law are too sweeping to ignore. I don’t expect Democratic candidates to have the moral courage to take on the irrational knee-jerk reactions that surround the word “marriage.” If Edwards, Clinton or Obama want to use “unions not marriage” language, I’m willing to compromise. I do expect Democrats to stand fast against legislation and constitutional initiatives that have the potential to undermine current rights for all families, gay and straight. I do expect the Democrats to stand fast against initiatives that could hinder private and public institutions from setting their own non-discrimination, benefit, and support policies.

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December 23, 2006 by kirkjobsluder.

Now that I’m buying comic books again, I feel the need to buy mainstream comics that feature lesbigay characters to avoid the inevitable “it didn’t sell well, so we will sweep it back into the closet for the next decade.” This means I’m buying two teen-angst superhero team books right now: Young Avengers and Runaways. I started working back through Runaways after the Young Avengers-Runaways team-up for the “Civil War” mega event. (Which I try to ignore as much as possible.)

I must admit I have not collected the digest volume of Runaways that introduces this relationship, but blond vegan alien Karolina Dean becomes involved with Skrull alien shapeshifter Xavin. In the Young Avengers-Runaways mini-series, Xavin is always drawn as male, but with the implication that Xavin can become female at will. Runaways #22 shows Xavin spontaneously morphing between two human genders and a very masculine Skrull form.

Young Avengers build up the relationship between Wiccan (Billy Kaplan) and Hulking (Teddy Altman). This leads to the revelation that Teddy is also an alien shape-shifter with Skrull heritage. Teddy/Hulking is always shown as male. In fact, his most usual form mirrors that of the The Hulk, which maximizes secondary sexual characteristics.

There is something that bothers me about how two gay/lesbian relationships, in two very similar genres of comic books, end up both involving shape-shifting aliens. Partly because as we saw with the Young Avengers-Runaways team-up the writers can put those relationships back into the closet in public. But also I suppose that it gives people reading the strip a way out of considering what kinds of affection is shared in these relationships. It gives a way out for those readers whose first question is, “who is the man/woman in the relationship.”

On the other hand, Runaways #22 shows a willingness to deal with gender ambiguity that is refreshing.

Molly: It’s just, I think everybody would be more comfortable if you could mabye just look like a girl forever.

Xavin: And I’m sure some people would be more comfortable if Karolina like males or if you were not a genetic mutation. But I am not like everyone else, and that means you may have to learn to accept something new and different, as my betrothed already has.

Overall, I’m becoming more impressed with Runaways both for its genre-twisting, but also for its willingness to crack open some of the more interesting aspects of adolescence. I’m still expecting Marvel to turn-around and sideline or throw those characters back into the closet.

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November 29, 2006 by kirkjobsluder.

This is a test message for a new blog system.  As much as I liked bloxsom, I decided that it was time for something different. Watch this space.

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