Tuesday, March 31, 2009

A new bloggo by the froggo is born

One less-kind way to bore people is out there, oh my, a new blog is born!: I have D-NURBS 4 this (geeky wordplay), it's all about stereolithography, or it will be, and it comes from your less favourite blogger but favourite frog.
Well, it wasn't born but it's open now, like the circus. :-)

Pay a visit, if you're not afraid of frogs, and listen to the jazz gadget while I bore you. Or better: send your enemies to visit! But beware of the terribly boring Hyperolius Hypernurbius frog, it can kill with only one boring session. :-)

C.

Bloggiversary / Abstract Nº82

Today the blog is two years old. They've been only two years of mostly enjoyed times of blogging, and some few ones not enjoyed. A lot of study and work had happened lately, and during this time off I've seen how I miss coming back to post something simple. I'm going through inner changes regarding my blogs, in fact, most of that study that I named is happening due to my impulse of improving the quality of the material posted. No time during the day seems to be time enough for anything. During the course of this two years, the blog has been tied to the course of my personal concerns and changes, even though it doesn't shows that up.
I don't like to speak about me here, whenever I do, I feel that I'm writing something boring.
I like this abstract, it's colourful and represents my joy of posting here, and other general joys.



What man may learn, what man may do,
Of right or wrong of false or true,
While, skipper-like, his course he steers
Through nine and twenty mingled years,
Half misconceived and half forgot,
So much I know and practise not.

Old are the words of wisdom, old
The counsels of the wise and bold:
To close the ears, to check the tongue,
To keep the pining spirit young;
To act the right, to say the true,
And to be kind whate'er you do.

Thus we across the modern stage
Follow the wise of every age;
And, as oaks grow and rivers run
Unchanged in the unchanging sun,
So the eternal march of man
Goes forth on an eternal plan.


Robert Louis Stevenson, poem named after the first line.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Creature of the Light Nº10




On one brilliant morning, in a land of very gentle people, a superb man and a superb woman shouted in the public square: "I want her to be queen!" "I want to be queen!" She laughed and trembled. He spoke to his friends of revelation, of ordeals terminated. They leaned on each other in ecstasy.

They were indeed sovereigns for a whole morning, while all the houses were adorned with crimson hangings, and for an entire afternoon, while they made their way toward the palm gardens.

--

Un beau matin, chez un peuple fort doux, un homme et une femme superbes criaient sur la place publique : "Mes amis, je veux qu'elle soit reine !" "Je veux être reine !" Elle riait et tremblait. Il parlait aux amis de révélation, d'épreuve terminée. Ils se pâmaient l'un contre l'autre.

En effet ils furent rois toute une matinée où les tentures carminées se relevèrent sur les maisons, et tout l'après-midi, où ils s'avancèrent du côté des jardins de palmes.

Arthur Rimbaud, "Royauté" ("Royalty", from Illuminations).

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Creature of the Light Nº9



EDIT: Excuse me, the frog has a crooked eye, beside other parts of his body, so the camera was pointing who knows where; it's corrected down here:



My faith
is a great weight
hung on a small wire,
as doth the spider
hang her baby on a thin web,
as doth the vine,
twiggy and wooden,
hold up grapes
like eyeballs,
as many angels
dance on the head of a pin.

God does not need
too much wire to keep Him there,
just a thin vein,
with blood pushing back and forth in it,
and some love.
As it has been said:
Love and a cough
cannot be concealed.
Even a small cough.
Even a small love.
So if you have only a thin wire,
God does not mind.
He will enter your hands
as easily as ten cents used to
bring forth a Coke.


Anne Sexton, "Small wire".

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Crown of Circe



[...]
Give me some change. Must life be only sweet,
all honey-pap as babes would have their food?
And, if my heart must always be adrowse
in a hush of stagnant sunshine, give me then
something outside me stirring; let the storm
break up the sluggish beauty, let it fall
beaten below the feet of passionate winds,
and then to-morrow waken jubilant
in a new birth: let me see subtle joy
of anguish and of hopes, of change and growth.

What fate is mine who, far apart from pains
and fears and turmoils of the cross-grained world,
dwell, like a lonely god, in a charmed isle
where I am first and only, and, like one
who should love poisonous savours more than mead,
long for a tempest on me and grow sick
of resting, and divine free carelessness!
Oh me, I am a woman, not a god;
yea, those who tend me even are more than I,
my nymphs who have the souls of flowers and birds
singing and blossoming immortally.
[...]


Augusta Davies Webster, "Circe".

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

3D Genetic Algorithms - Abstract Nº81

I've been a bit unfair with this blog only because my standards raise in a normal way, always wanting to show something visually different. It is also commonly hard to find a way to show something different within enclosed margins, and the margins of this blog are specifically determined: only genetic algorithms, only without using image filters. It was very easy for me to ask genetic algorithms to give me more, but the big question was "How more than this, and how to achieve it fast?".
Shamefully, I also considered closing the blog only because it couldn't take me farther. So this time off has been a good lesson about being human and having limitations, and about honoring a blog for what it's made to show, and for the good that has given me.
Also, I've been told (and showed) that the images look dim, to my surprise. The configuration of my colour profile must be radically different than in other computer monitors.
So then everything changed for everything to stay the same.
By the way, people are so kind to me, so kind.
Another abstract, softer, cleaner. I'll continue where I left off. This blog offers This (r) :-)



All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair--
The bees are stirring--birds are on the wing--
And Winter, slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,
Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.
Bloom, O ye amaranths ! bloom for whom ye may,
For me ye bloom not ! Glide, rich streams, away!
With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll:
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?
Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live.


S. T. Coleridge, "Work without hope".

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

The flux, the reflux, and the gates on the shore

You work on digital art. You work on it, or you take it as a hobby. No matter how you do it, at some point, you reach your peak, and you think you're done: your creative peak has been reached, nothing new can be done. So the creative flux turns into a reflux of technical work. You redo your own program, facing sleepless nights of hideous math and logic. Write, compile, test, debug; write, compile, test, debug. Then, you come back renewed, and with enough luck, you re-crafted your digital tool in such a way that you can build different things, you create new stuff, and they could be even better in a way; so you are happy about your effort again... for a while.

With time, with enough repetition, you notice that the flux and reflux of this sea would inevitably overflow the container, and eventually erase the continent. The waves (your efforts) take away (mostly time of) things that belong to your life. And all this only to overcome a creative block belonging to your hobby (in the worst case), or to your digital artistic work (in the best one). Those are the gates of obsession. The three options are: walk through them, walk away from them, or knock them down. How do I know? I knew about writing; in spanish. I knew well about it. But I didn't know how to control myself when facing a frontier. In the words of my mother, when I was a teenager: "You have no control of yourself". Without knowing, I crossed the gates of obsession and I ruined the pleasure of writing. And I had to knock the gates down, burn all my papers, and don't write creatively ever again.

You learn through your life. You really learn, or at least you find the facts that fit you best. ...I won't stain and ruin the pleasure of an activity that was born as a haven, not ever again.

It came the time of the reflux, of programming and recoding --write, compile, test, debug (even when you suck at it) and at the same time, you saw that the waves were becoming too wild.
I don't wanna irresponsibly surf through the flooded gates of obsession again, or I'll lose the peaceful pleasure of coming back here. So: I'm walking away from the gates, keeping the pleasure safe. Will come back to work on images and match poems later, when the sea is calm again.

C.