Diablography

Tree Face

2009-07-08T08:21:00.001-04:00

oh my god it's you, originally uploaded by whalesoap.

Disgusted

2009-07-06T11:15:00.001-04:00

Face in the Shower, originally uploaded by supah.

Today's mood: Bad.

2009-07-03T10:42:00.001-04:00

Bad Mood T, originally uploaded by lexillustrator.

Logoglyphs Explained: Cartography

2008-07-07T21:22:00.003-04:00

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Cartography: Relating to the art or technique of making maps or charts.

What better thing to use for a image relating to maps than topographic lines, like you'd see on a map? The bands between the lines gradually change from blue at the outside to light green in the center; I took symbols from Version 4, laid them over this design, and made them semi-transparent, sort of like tissue paper. Then I made the topographic lines bright red.

Logoglyphs Explained: Cabinetmaker

2008-07-06T19:50:00.002-04:00

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For this design ( a cabinetmaker is, of course, an artisan specializing in making fine articles of wooden furniture, including cabinets) I envisioned two cabinet doors, with a frame all around and inlaid wooden bands zigzagging across the front. Wood colors, of course--in this case various shades of tan.

Logoglyphs Explained: Brambleberry

2008-07-06T19:41:00.004-04:00

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I'm pretty sure this design was applied to a different word before I used "brambleberry," because those types of bushes (a prickly shrub of the genus Rubus, including the blackberry and the raspberry) don't have 3-petaled flowers (if any do at all). But I did what I did. The lines that make up the glyph design are widened to bands, and the "flowers" laid over them, and the whole thing done in plant-y and flower-y colors.

Logoglyphs Explained: Bacteriology

2008-06-25T22:14:00.004-04:00

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Bacteriology: The study of bacteria, especially in relation to medicine and agriculture.

I used the Version 1 symbols, which I then rounded to look more like, well, bacteria. Or to share the roundness of bacteria. The shapes would look better if I had hand-drawn them; I pretty much automated the process in Adobe Illustrator and settled for the result.

I don't remember how I came up with the color scheme. When using a variety of colors like this, I color the logoglyph the same way one would color a map, using as many colors as necessary to make sure no two adjacent shapes share the same color. This one uses four, plus the background color.

Logoglyphs Explained: Accouchement

2008-06-24T21:57:00.007-04:00

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Accouchement is just a fancy French name for giving birth. I went ahead with Version 1 for this design, and since women usually give birth lying down, I laid it on its side. I made most of the shapes sort of skin-colored, and then ran a stream of red through it, symbolizing the blood and nutrients that go through the umbilical cord. Then, just for fun, and to add some little highlights, I colored two rectangles pink, for girls, and two blue, for boys.

Name Generator Roulette, Game 1

2008-06-24T21:12:00.009-04:00

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Kottke.org mentioned this random name generator, a useful thing if you're writing a novel and need to come up with a character's name, or if you want to play the game I invented, Name Generator Roulette.

Here are the simple rules: click on the name generator and look up the names in Google. Points if the person exists in real life, no points if not. (Give yourself as many points as you want. If the person is in Google, report on the one who gets the first hit.) Half credit if the man's name turns out to belong to a woman, or vice versa.

So here's the inaugural game:

Men:
Kenton Lavery: Does not appear in Google
Stephen Carroll: The first hit is for a lecturer in English at Santa Clara University

Women:
Sheridan Goble: A man, deceased, a former resident of Floyd County, Kentucky
Kathleen Smith: A professor in the Duke University Department of Biology

Points this round: 1,750

Fun times for all!

Logoglyphs Explained: Acciaccatura

2008-06-23T21:17:00.007-04:00

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The definition of Acciaccatura is:

An ornament note that is one half step or one whole step below a principal note and is sounded at the same time as the principal note, adding dissonance to a harmony.

I used the Version 1 symbols for this design, and the definition of the word gave me the idea of taking the design made from the combined symbols, duplicating it, and slightly shifting it down and to the right. The word didn't suggest any particular colors; I just chose a color scheme I liked.

The Making of Loglyphs, Part II

2008-06-22T00:06:00.007-04:00

The first set of symbols I made I'll call Version 1:I don't know at what point I decided to make variations on the symbols, but the first thing I did was take the lines in Version 1 and make them curvy. This is Version 2:For Version 3, I didn't just make them curvy, but made them complete (or nearly complete) circles: Then I did the opposite, changing the diagonal lines to horizontal and vertical lines, for Version 4:--------------------

But what to do with these things?

The idea came to me somehow to arrange the symbols in a 3 by 4 grid, which would give me 12 spaces. And to figure out which symbols would go in those spaces, I simply chose a 12-letter word. The idea then came to me to let the definition of the word determine the variations and colors I would use in each design.

I went through the American Heritage Dictionary and found 191 12-letter words. Then I obsessively sketched designs in a graph paper pad, redrew a whole bunch of them in Adobe Illustrator on the computer, and then chose and colored the best ones, until I ended up with 48 final designs.

In future posts I'll talk about how I came up with each of these designs.

The Making of Logoglyphs, Part I

2008-06-09T18:32:00.025-04:00

I was doodling one day on a crossword puzzle, filling in the squares like this: I got to thinking about how many different ways I could combine these four triangular shapes in a 2 by 2 grid.I came up with 256.

Some more doodling got me from this:to this:
to this:
which I thought would make a cool sculpture--maybe out of curved pieces of copper tubing--if I put a couple of the shapes together.

But how do I find the best combinations of 256 different symbols? To narrow it down I picked the 26 I liked best and assigned each to a letter of the alphabet. That made it easier to find the best pairings.

A little more doodling got me from this:to this:to this:
A bunch of those shapes, arranged in a 2 by 2, 3 by 3, or 3 by 4 grid, looked really cool, sort of in perspective, but not:
Part II coming soon.

Logoglyphs: The Book

2008-06-02T21:55:00.002-04:00

Cover, originally uploaded by Vividp. Clicking on the image will take you to the book pages on flickr.

A couple of months ago I "published" a book. I put that in quotes, because it wasn't a situation where I had an editor and publisher and copies were sent to bookstores across the nation; I published it through Blurb, which in the old days would have been called a "vanity press," but these days is called a "personal" or "print-on-demand" publisher. Blurb allows anyone to print as few copies of a book as they prefer, even if it's only one.

When I discovered Blurb I saw a perfect opportunity to put into book form some designs that I had been working on for years. I downloaded Booksmart, the Blurb software, attached every page as a jpeg image, and very soon had a beautiful hardcover book to proudly display on my mantle.

With a softcover copy sent to my mom, and another to my wife's parents, there are now three copies in existence. And since we live practically on opposite coasts, you could say they're blanketing the nation.

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 12 - Green River, Utah

2008-05-28T22:10:00.005-04:00

Another bad photo. Sorry.

This is not the city of Green River--which is 56 miles to the south--but the river itself. This stretch is south of Roosevelt (36 miles) and flows into Desolation Canyon, the deepest canyon in Utah and a popular area for white-water rafting. The distant mountains on the left are called, coincidentally, the Roan Peaks (see previous entry). On the right is Flat Top Mountain.

KMZ file

This concludes our tour.

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 11 - Roan Plateau, Colorado

2008-05-26T23:09:00.003-04:00

I was intrigued by how the land here gradually rises up to the south, ending in steep gulches and dropping down to the Colorado River. (The gulches remind me of Alpine canyons, just like you'd see in the Swiss Alps, except they're a lot dryer. Which is why they're called gulches.)

It took a bit of research on the internet before I found out the rise is called the Roan Plateau. I also found out it's the site of a dispute over whether the BLM should allow oil and gas drilling. And from the looks of things, they went ahead and allowed it, because those cleared spots in the photo contain drilling rigs and industrial buildings.

The big gulch on the left, leading down to the Colorado River Valley, is Parachute Creek Canyon; the one to the right of it is the Roan Creek Valley. As for the...gulch?...valley?...in the center of the photo, I looked and looked and couldn't find a name for it. Every gulch that branches off from it has a name, but not the thing itself. I know that Piceance Creek runs through it, so it might be called Piceance Creek Basin, but I also know that the bigger basin that contains Roan Plateau is called Piceance Basin, so I don't know, and perhaps I never will.

KMZ file

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 10 - Grand Mesa, Colorado

2008-05-24T22:30:00.004-04:00

What caught my eye here was the big snow-covered mesa, which is called Grand Mesa. To the right of the mesa is Grand Junction. The canyon in the foreground is Parachute Creek Canyon. Coming into the picture from the left is the Colorado River Valley, with, appropriately, the Colorado River running through it, and, alongside the river, I-70. The valley beyond that, just in front of Grand Mesa, is the Plateau Valley.

KMZ file

Photos:

Grand Mesa

Grand Junction

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 9 - Dillon Lake, Colorado

2008-05-22T22:51:00.005-04:00

The frozen reservoir in the center of the picture is Dillon Lake, named after the town of Dillon, which had to be moved when the dam was built in 1963. The lake is the largest water storage facility in the Denver water system. Dillon is a "suburb" of Silverthorne, the largest town in the county (Summit County).

The mountains in the foreground are the Vasquez Mountains. At the top of the valley in the foreground is St. Louis Peak and to the right is Byers Peak, at the center of the Byers Peak Wilderness Area. I don't know the name of the valley, but St. Louis Creek runs through it, so maybe it's St. Louis Valley.

The ski area to the left is Keystone Resort. To the right is Copper Mountain. Breckenridge is beyond the reservoir.

KMZ file

Photos:

Dillon Lake

Silverthorne

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 8 - Pikes Peak, Colorado

2008-05-21T20:34:00.008-04:00

Pikes Peak is the snow-capped mountain in the background. It was named after Zebulon Pike, an early explorer of the area. Although 29th among Colorado's highest peaks, it's the most accessible, with several easy ways to reach the top, including a road and a cog railway. Once a year it's the scene of an automobile and motorcycle race called the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. And, according to Wikipedia, the view from Pikes Peak was the inspiration for the song "America the Beautiful."

Right in front of Pikes Peak is Colorado Springs, best known as the home of the the United States Air Force Academy.

Also in this view, though I don't know exactly where they are, are the Peaceful Valley Scout Ranch and a former Titan nuclear missile silo, near the town of Elizabeth.

Photos:

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 7 - Cheyenne Bottoms, Kansas

2008-05-19T20:06:00.005-04:00

Another bad photo, but, again, the landmark is easy to pick out.

Cheyenne Bottoms is a state wildlife management area (and a stop for migrating whooping cranes) between Claflin, Great Bend, and Hoisington (which calls itself the "Gateway to Cheyenne Bottoms"). Hoisington was featured in a segment on "This American Life," which talked about the night a tornado hit during the prom and the prom-goers didn't know it.

KMZ File

Photos:

Cheyenne Bottoms

Hoisington

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 6 - Kanopolis Lake, Kansas

2008-05-17T22:04:00.005-04:00

Okay. Yes. I know the photo is horrible. The camera focused on the specks on the window instead of the distant landscape outside. But the lake is a recognizable shape, and I didn't have any problems finding it in Google Earth.

The lake is between Salina and Ellsworth. On the south end of the lake is Kanopolis Lake State Park, the first state park in Kansas, established in 1955.

Nearby Salina was the site, in 2005, of the takeoff and landing of Steve Fossett's record-breaking solo, non-stop flight around the world.

KMZ File

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 5 - Watts Bar Nuclear Plant, Tennessee

2008-05-17T21:53:00.006-04:00

The Watts Bar Nuclear Plant, on the Tennessee River, is run by the Tennessee Valley Authority. It apparently took a really long time to build: construction began in 1973, and it didn't go on line until 1993. The town on the opposite bank, behind the plume of steam, is Forest Grove (though there doesn't seem to be much of a town there).

KMZ File

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 4 - Tellico Lake, Tennessee

2008-05-17T21:15:00.007-04:00

This lake was formed when the Tellico Dam was built in the 1970's on the Little Tennessee River. The dam almost wasn't built, because of a small endangered fish called the snail darter. A lawsuit brought against the Tennessee Valley Authority to save the fish went all the way to the Supreme Court. The dam was finished only because congress exempted it from the Endangered Species Act in 1979.

The lake inundated the site of Tuskegee, a Cherokee village that was the reputed birthplace of Sequoyah, inventor of the Cherokee alphabet.

KMZ file

Photos:

Tellico Lake

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 3 - Maryville, Tennessee

2008-05-15T20:35:00.004-04:00

What caught my eye was the rows of buildings in the foreground; they're part of a smelting plant owned and operated by Alcoa (it's actually located in the city of Alcoa, right next door). Maryville is where Sam Houston spent his youth. It's also the birthplace of Melanie Hutsell, one of the most annoying cast members of Saturday Night Live, although she did a good Jan Brady.

KMZ File

Photos:

Maryville

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 2 - Wears Valley, Tennessee

2008-05-14T22:03:00.008-04:00

Wears Valley is west of Pigeon Forge. It saw its first white settlers in the 1790's, and was the scene of conflicts between the settlers and the Cherokee. That curved line along the hillside in the lower right is a line of cabins, called--I think--The Havens at Hedgewood, part of The Preserve Resort. Beyond the valley is the northern border of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

KMZ File

Photos:

Wears Valley

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 1 - Weaverville, North Carolina

2008-05-13T22:24:00.014-04:00

From the first Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet:

Whenever we fly, I'm compelled to look out the window and try to figure out where we are. If I could, I'd stay in constant contact with the cockpit so they could ID for me every landmark we pass, but that's not possible; and I found out I can't use my GPS receiver on the plane--so I have to settle for taking pictures out the window, guessing our general vicinity on a road atlas, and then when I get home trying to find the landmarks on Google Earth.

It's actually a fun way to do it, with all the detective work involved, and when I can't find something for a long time and then suddenly there it is, what a feeling of accomplishment I get.

So here is Part 1 of the second official chapter of Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet.

The town where the two roads converge is Weaverville, where O Henry used to spend some time. To the right is the French Broad River, so named because it was broad and flowed into French territory (as opposed to the English Broad River, which flowed into English territory). In the background, at the left, is Asheville. Here it is in Google Earth:

KMZ File

Photos (courtesy of flickr):
Weaverville
French Broad River