Assorted pixels

Overheard

“Your work looks quite like you!”

Work is not tedious, and being in one piece ¹ surely feels awesome.

addendum

I happen to work quite slowly without the influence of caffeine. And while catnip ² is legal, pot is not.

And it is quite fortunate for Californians for Prop 8 to be thrown out. But transitioning to another gender does not solve the old problems; it simply replaces the old with a set of new ones.

another addendum

Did a draw-a-person (DAP) test, drew a person “of unclear sex”. Also, regular blood tests are important to HRT ³.

Miscellany

The name of technologies a resumé carries is never important, because things change so fast, it is often better to find the person who learns fast. Ahem, now the iPhone is so popular, many developers want their share of the game but could not even bother to learn English, the principal language in which iOS documentation is written.

Maybe it’s very certain the reason why gifted people are “gifted” is because of their scarcity ⁴.

Deus ex machina.

There is a window that is closing. I am already over 18. Approximately 1.5 years left.

Recourse

So went the book of Isaiah:

Fear not, for you will not be put to shame; And do not feel humiliated, for you will not be disgraced; But you will forget the shame of your youth, And the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more.

And one could hope. Hope sets the soul free, and subsequently can set one free. Time and space are mere illusions while energy is everything.

Recourse

And so was:

Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: “Σιβυλλα τι θελεις?”; respondebat illa: “αποθανειν θελω.”

(I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl of Cumae hanging in a jar, and when the boys said to her, “Sibyl, what do you want?” she replied, “I want to die.”)

Perceived desperation, frustration and plausible enlightenment

ipso facto. I have made many mistakes, but I have learned from them and will be making more of them to learn more.

Obligatory plug

I newly discovered artist & musician Ólafur Arnalds.

The design may only be related to how the bespoke object works, but how it looks like is commensurately important. Failing to cater to either is negligence and a breach of professionalism. Only the most banal commodity adjure neither, in a surprisingly lenient sense.

Good design is unobstrusive, it melts away. Good design melts away because it resonates with the form and soul of the wrapped context, be it an object or a mere passage.

Besides the 2 secret (“they’ll be out when they’re done”) projects, publiusEditor and arboreal, I will work on these stuff this week. Git’s submodule functionality totally rocks, and it had led me persuading our cofounder into buying GitHub’s paid plan. (Cabal once said at C4 on Coda Confidential, that, paraphrased, “oh the largest purchase at the time probably was a $500 SSL certificate, and we argued over that…”)

I need to pray. And yeah some stuff got ditched. They will not come back.

Colored

It ALWAYS bugs me why polished OS X text editors have flush white backgrounds. They ought to be rgba(0, 0, 0, .05), so there’s no eye strain. Flush white stuff is never honest.

More on liminal issues

Everything is fine. Flat but fine. Bodily troubles galore, but such is the unavoidable pain that being alive yields. No compromises shall besiege, and definitely. Please try judging me with my pixels (a placebo for “padding stuff”).

I have to interrupt our ordinary program and announce that sadly, audion got cut off. Things are very complicated, but in a nutshell I collaborated with 2 coders, and they ditched my (already paid) interface citing the design being too difficult to implement.

Heck.

My first iPhone app will be released under my own label then, and it would not be a book app.

Another startup team turned me down 2 weeks ago, citing a lack of experience in handling large-scale web apps. (Oh the irony; I was a photographer-wannabe 18 monthes ago.)

I need to rework my personal site and blog some day. They look pale compared to those custom-ordered pixels. Yeah, I am available starting early April, hopefully.

Colophon

If I unfriended you anywhere on Facebook, Plurk or Twitter, that is not because that I hate you; quite the opposite, our relationship is so cherished that it ought not get strained by excessibe babble from either party. Let’s switch over to plain emailing, and so be it.

Anyone interested in a CPCoderNight in Taipei?

Iconology, and tales from blatantly failed ones

Iconology is about delivering idealism, transcending the border between dream and reality. Iconology is not about perspection, nor is it related to realism. Photorealism is a word often used and cited in retrospection, but in actuality it’s far off. Iconology is the art of delivering an ideal in terms of visual metaphors, that melts and immerses in an universal sense.

So using a 3D suite for icons is a pesky move, and needs careful consideration. Apple’s LLVM icon is not done with 3D, but meticulously constructed planear 2D vector graphics. And whenever somebody points you to the Human Interface Guideline, bear in mind that it’s no lesser than the W3C’s CSS 3 book — both standards in progress, and whatmore in retrospection.

Remember that the guideline is in itself anecdotally a guideline. Guidelines are meant to be followed like rules, and rules are ought to be broken by those gifted with adequate merit.

Beginners shall study photography and learn what not to do (I assume that all interested iconologists are merited, and would never resort to a yet more planear mind; I believe in individuals).

So be it. It is hilariously exciting to nit-pick my own old work and find the faults.

Has been cleansing own mind and throwing stuff out all night long. It is amazing to look backwards and connect the dots thru detriti, pieces of bad typography (all once considered superior at the time being, which I am kind of ashamed of), immature visuals and similar objects less than immaculate.

A sensation rose and passed.

Chastised.

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status liminal

There is little need to explain, and I do think that everybody would say, “duh.” It is so apparent isn’t it?

Draft (of the process) yet to be published. That’s my first Mac app icon, done entirely with vectors. I am not ashamed of its quality, which is a good omen. There might be some minor adjustments amended; the image shown here is not final.

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Nota

— Death and all his friends. Had dream, met UFO, gone to the past, saw blue-eyed people in Asian build. Talked. Hit trunk, rode vertically-sliding elevator.

— Normal pacing is done so for the idiots and the self-humiliating ones, who dared not proceed faster than a tortoise, needed constant pampering, and could not even read one entire line at a time.

— But I still feel lonesome. However, am relocating. Hunting for projects.

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Nota

Goal of ’10: Become a better person. Become a better designer. Solve more issues. Create more work. Becoming a better person is no easy matter, needs stamina, and is not fail-safe. And there’s only one chance.

p.s. Start saving for your retirement when you get your first paycheck. I didn’t (sincerely they always appear in trollies of books), and wished that I did.

modo is a fantastic application.

Update to Colorimeter

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萌え！

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Project Acoustic — Sketch

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The Swarm

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Reflections

有時晚了，捷運停駛，偶爾（在運匠的幫助下）驅車出門、回家。冷氣強烈，帶著一點車內裝的松香味道，奔馳在些許陌生的路上。我從來不認得路，只懂得看地圖上粗大藍色線條，在某幾個路口左轉右轉。

我曾經以這樣的方式活了好多天，直到遇見布農部落的孩子，那天我低沉問起女士，有沒有可能讓自己變成布農族人？她說，其實你已經是啦。孩子若干，併成一合唱團，有些相處熱絡，有些倒幾番生疏；自泰國緬甸邊境回來，與整團孩子正相互認識起，偏偏協會正式成立，過半的孩子立刻被踢出新組的團。從此，我們熟識如陌生人。即若我的生命註定不屬於任何一地，那末認清這頓歸屬與互不歸屬的旅程也來得太早。

菁英教育不該被普遍適用，因為菁英概念本身無問題，但在開始有目的地培養菁英前，應該看清楚菁英歸屬給哪個社會網絡。協會培養熟稔漢文化的布農孩子，期其成為菁英引領部落方向，於我眼簡單地只是扭曲的資優班邪靈範式的另一復甦。我永遠為在辭職前未能指出此一邏輯謬誤而後悔。我們的確開啟了孩子看見世界的另一扇窗，但卻無法提供超過一種的風景，也根本無法讓孩子走出這道牆。

電台廣播繼續在車裡播放著，背景音樂我聽得出來輕輕地，以一種台灣人莫名其妙喜歡的東西的那種方式，商業化地軟軟地若有所思－－是 Yiruma 的東西，但與內容完全無關。正是因為背景音樂純屬裝飾，不與內容相關，因此黏性特低。因為黏性特低，因此永遠不會有人動腦筋要改革或者推翻它，也永遠不會有人刻意去注意它。只有對前景毫不敢興趣的人會注意同時一直存在的背景裡的東西。

而我們或許並非一直對前景不感到興趣的，至少是在某一時間以後方纔這樣。

生命在躁與鬱之間交雜擺盪，由一個頂點過渡到另一個低谷，跳過中間的灰色部份，解析之後，畫成了尖尖的圖形。如今夜已深。

開闊空間人行道上一位極端瘦細男子穿著小尖領口衣，用力將脖子向後扭、再用力拉回。所有關於最高水準、關於品質、關於一些虛幻的目標的追求與其言語表達，全部都可以忽略。只要、只能也只需要對一切誠實，誠實到了特定程度，即可。