Lazy afternoon at the foundry.

It’s not my fault if you start caring about grid systems, typefaces or history of writing instruments.
Design Fundamentals for Developers (MIX09):
The best three hours I spent this weekend. This is a workshop given by Robby Ingebretsen. Check out his original post at http://nerdplusart.com/mix09-design-fundamentals-for-developers and grab the videos and slides from:

Part 1: Process
Part 3: Composition
Part 3: Visuals

Design Fundamentals for Developers: Slides

Random snippets:
The process of design is used to bring order from chaos and randomness.
Sorta like art & has a black shirt.
The alternative to good design is bad design, not no design at all (Douglas Martin).
Authenticity is invaluable; originality non-existant (Jim Jarmusch).
There is no color that is better than black. […] To me, black is black and red is color. (Massimo Vignelli).

Typography in 8 and 16 bit systems:
Discussion about the fonts used in the most influential systems of yesterday (and the fonts in ttf format available for download).

Typography in 8 bits system fonts
Typography in 16 bits system fonts

The 60s at grain edit:
This is where I go when I need something to inspire me http://grainedit.com/tag/1960s/

Camino a la CISL 2011

En unas horitas me voy a la Conferencia Internacional de Software Libre a presentar con los Compañeros de Crear el prototipo de nuestro último proyecto, “Guitarra Vas a Llorar“.

La idea central es agregar un dispositvo electrónico a una guitarra estándar capaz de mostrar acordes, escalas y canciones sobre el diapasón. Mediante LEDs (diodos emisores de luz) se indicará en donde el guitarrista debe apoyar sus dedos. El funcionamiento se completa con dos alternativas de uso:

  •  Manual: Uso de una botonera y un pequeño LCD desde donde se podrá seleccionar que mostrar sobre el diapasón de la guitarra (escalas, notas, acordes )
  •  Automática: Conectarla mediante un cable USB a la computadora. Y a través de un software reproducir una canción, lección de estudio o una secuencia de acordes y que ésta se muestre en la guitarra.

Más info del proyecto:
http://www.elarteylatecnologia.com.ar/spip.php?article60

Programa de la Conferencia Internacional de Software Libre:
http://www.cisl.org.ar/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=373&Itemid=466

Sinusitis.

For the last seven days I had this disease. I could not remember being this sick since I was a kid and catched chickenpox.

The first three days were like hell. Fever, alternating states of extreme coldness and warmth, generalized pain and swelling and worst of all, toothache. If I had at hand a forceps I’d disposed of half of my tooth just to make it go away. (yes, I do have a set of dentistry tools in the shack but the weather wasn’t encouraging me to leave my home. No, sadly I don’t have the x-ray head nor the chair. I could certainly make a good use of a dentist chair, they are really comfy.). I even had to sleep with socks and long sleeved shirts (normally, in winters like this, I sleep with no additional clothes and a quarter window opened).

The idea of spending several days doing nothing wasn’t very appealing so I thought “If I’m going to be quiet doing nothing I’d better read so it’s not lost time.”. Well, moving was hard and trying to focus my sight on some books made me feel really odd so I strapped a wireless mouse to my chest, put a lot of blankets and the laptop on top to hold everything together. From time to time I passed out but I managed to read quite a lot, still can’t make heads or tails out of some topics but it’s better than nothing.

On the second day of this I gave up and it was a good move. The toothache made eating everything but liquids barely impossible and I felt weak, let alone in mood for studying.

The following days I slept in average 16 hours a day, somedays in a continuous chunk, others 8~9 and several naps. It was weird but ignoring the pain and dizziness I’d get sinusitis again just for the side-effects regarding the sleep and the dreams I had.

First. I don’t know how, but I woke up like a robot for medication before the clock rung, turned off the alarm and fell asleep again just like that. And the most important, dreams. Lots of dreams, strange, livid and I remembered almost each and every one, I just wished I had taken notes because now some are fading.

I dreamt a lot with tubes, vacuum tubes. Several times I dreamt that I was in what looked like a small town, humble, electronics store of the late 40’s shopping for a console radio. They were amazingly real, I could touch them, feel the veneer. I think I tried every Zenith from that era. Also I dreamt that one of my cat’s nest were filled with assorted tubes, I can recall seeing a 6L6G (love that bottle shape) and a pair of 807… and ‘we’ cuddled by the fireplace. Yes, I’m a tubehead weirdo.

Also I had a couple of lucid dreams that I’d rather not talk about but I woke with a big big smile.

Otra placa se va de viaje…

Por un lado estoy contento porque me salieron impecables los trazos, aunque el silk medio corrido. En el otro extremo estoy enojado, no puede ser que en La Plata esté dos semanas para que me traigan componentes a un precio justo. Si los compraba en mouser o digikey los tenía antes.

otra vez el proxy de speedy.

Al final con los bbs estábamos mejor. No va que quiero comentar en un blog y me salta “Your comment has been blocked because the blog owner has set their spam filter to not allow comments from users behind proxies.”. Demás está decir que no tengo ningún proxy, por lo menos no a propósito. Che José Speedy no me gusta tener que hacer ssh -D servidor_en_la_otra_punta_del_mundo cuando quiero laburar desde casa o comentar en cualquier sitio.

Torno Lorch Schmidt

Hace unos días me traje a casa un torno de relojero que perteneció a mi abuelo (entre muchas otras profesiones fué relojero). Tengo que volver a buscar los contrapuntos y el plato divisor pero dentro de todo está bastante completo. Mas fotos después del salto.

 

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Poesía electrónica.

spam loco que me llegó de China.

“Most impresarios believe that asteroid behind bur near corporation.He called her Charity (or was it Charity?).tape recorder over meditates, and from tenor leaves; however, espadrille from admonish..Still host her from lover inside, bestow great honor upon her defined by diskette with related to defendant.Most dahlias believe that inside support group assimilate over haunch.”