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.

Posted in creative process, Uncategorized | No Comments »

April 7, 2007 by kirkjobsluder.

I’m officially a volunteer for WFHB. Mostly I’m going to be working the desk. But it’s going to be heck on my music budget. The DJ right now is playing Billy’s Band, which does a mean Tom Waits cover.

““Billy’s Band - Clap Hands” Live at the 6th Russian Rock Festival in New York” on Google Video
Billy’s Band Clap Hands Live at the 6th Russian Rock Festival in Brooklyn, New York http://billysband.ru http://billysband.com Provided by http://www.to4ka.com

And just for Easter, the cool-man himself.

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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 27, 2007 by kirkjobsluder.

I already commented on Zappa’s Baby Snakes but I just saw Comic Book, The Movie which brought this up in my mind again.

There is a genre of cinema which basically says, “here are my friends doing crazy things.” Which is great if you are a friend or fan of the director and know those crazy people. It’s not so great if you are not in on the joke. Mark Hamill plays a geeky comic shop owner and fanzine editor who tries to influence a film adaptation of his favorite character, Commander Courage. Some of the best parts of the Comic Book, The Movie involve Hugh Hefner, Kevin Smith, and Stan Lee giving deadpan commentary about a fictional WWII comic book artist. The protagonist’s dismay that Hollwood wants base the movie on 21st century jingoism rather than WWII jingoism makes for some interesting moments.

But large chunks of the film are filled with mugging cameos by animation voice talents and comic book writers. There is a quick inside joke of Hamill being snubbed by Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) and Jeremy Bulloch (Boba Fett) which was completely incomprehensible to us without looking at the voice credits. Often the extended improvisations are more baffling than funny. After watching this on DVD I realized that I’m not quite geeky enough to really get it.

Posted in movies, comics | No Comments »

February 27, 2007 by kirkjobsluder.

I’m a download junkie. Sometimes I find a tool that takes some twiddling to discover what it is good for, and sometimes I open up a tool and find an immediate use.

GrandPerspective is a disk space visualization tool for OS X that shows you how much space is taken up by individual files and directories. Immediately when I opened it up, I noticed a big, obsolete VirtualPC disk image that was taking up 15Gig of space. Among other things it gives you a nice idea of the relative size of various files.

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February 23, 2007 by kirkjobsluder.

A current catalog for an optics company has caused a stir by featuring a woman in a tight red skirt on the cover. Which is frustrating that a vendor in a career field which has some pretty serious issues with gender come to light over the last few years should know better.

Posted in research, opinion | 3 Comments »

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.

Posted in comics, Uncategorized | No Comments »

February 20, 2007 by kirkjobsluder.

Ars Technica reports that a study on video-game violence finds methodological problems with previous research.

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February 18, 2007 by kirkjobsluder.

Lady in the Water

Laura loved it. I thought it fell somewhere in the middle as far as movies go. I didn’t think in was so bad as to justify the hate heaped on it. But it didn’t enchant me either.

Charade

This is on my list of movies that I have to see once a year. Audry Hepburn, Carey Grant, and an excellent supporting cast in a movie that combines great banter with a parody of Alfred Hitchcock.

Frank Zappa: Baby Snakes

“A movie about people who do stuff that is not normal.” I don’t usually do concert videos. Chunks of the film include surreal clay animation by artist Bruce Bickford. An even more surreal moment comes near the start when you see a tiny animated Zappa, standing on a film editing device watching Bickford’s animated films. Bickford’s art uses clay to morph figures from castles to faces and back again, and the interviews with Bickford and shots of Zappa conducting the soundtrack.

However, most of the film focuses on two back-to-back concerts in New York City which highlights Zappa’s diverse musical styles from satirical humor pieces, spoken-word performance art, complex instrumentals, backstage goofing around, and audience participation. At the height of the concert, he invites select members of the audience on-stage to reenact his feud with Warner Brothers, and engage in a dance competition to a composition with a constantly shifting meter.

While it’s all in good fun, it’s not for the easily offended. The movie left me longing for a bit more Bickford, and it drags at points in spite of Zappa’s incredible on-stage showmanship. If you are not already a fan of his music, you probably should skip this one.

Posted in werid, movies | 1 Comment »

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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