My internet friend Allana and I are live blogging a reading of The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.

I started by smelling my copy of the book, which is something Allana insists is not advisable if you get your books from the library. My book came from the internet, through the mail. So I smelled it.

We’re reading it now, and posting our observations, and interesting discoveries. There is cool historical fact and cooler fictional machinery that we’re finding people have actually built versions of in the real world.

Click over and read along with us through the month of April!

Well, it’s still out there, sure, but it hasn’t been updated in quite a while. It is, however, very much worth a visit if you are interested in handmade Visual Effects or in the history of the special effects or animation industries. It covered in several posts many devices and processes used by filmmakers in the pre-digital industry to create effects, and many of the explanations are quite good.

For example, there was a post about the Max Fleischer innovation called The Rotograph that is actually the best, clearest description of this technique I’ve found in any medium. Take a minute to follow that link and read it – it shows how Max Fleischer used this:

To make a Popeye cartoon that looks like this:

Now, I was reminded of this technique because of a post today on Boing Boing pointing to a miniature photographer named Michael Paul Smith who is reconstructing a remembered version of the place and time he grew up using models photographed against live backgrounds:

Per the photographer’s explanation of this photo:

The houses in the background are about 2 blocks away from where I was shooting. At that distance, the model and real houses look as though they are the same size.
It’s always a challenge to find an exterior setting with that kind of unobstructed view. Also with no cars, people or signs in the way.
The Universe smiled upon me that day.

Take some time to click through Michael Paul Smith’s flickr pics, they are full of wonderful model photos taken against real backgrounds. Keep in mind that there is no digital manipulation in most of these images, just keenly constructed miniature sets cleverly aligned with actual backgrounds.

I’m currently working on a short film project that is meant to be set in some difficult to reach locales, and some environments that might be too dangerous to film in or that don’t quite exist. I’ve been looking for ways to film some of it without the budget that might be needed to fly people to a distant location, or pay for access to unusual environments (for example, something like an offshore oil rig). Seeing Michael Paul Smith’s photos today reminded me of the Rotograph and got me wondering how much of an environment might be built using something like this.

Maybe build the set, align it with an appropriate exterior, put portions of the set on movable bases that can be moved slowly at different speeds using electric motors, and maybe film foreground layers of the set separately from background layers, so those elements can have live actors filmed in live environments at the proper distance from the camera inserted in there in post. That sentence makes more sense to me right now than it probably does objectively, but I wanted to get it down here so I remember what I’m thinking.

When I have this sorted properly in my head I’ll make another post with a better description of the idea, and then I’ll try it and post the results.

In the meantime, read through BlueSpill and look at model set photos, and enjoy!

The sun will come up on the last day of 2009 soon, and I’ll probably do a rambling post on the decade gone, the first decade of THE FUTURE, kind of at an angle to what we all thought the third millennium AD would bring us. Some time this weekend. I need to gather up a first draft of thoughts on the last 10 years, in order to better know how to set upon goals for the next.

One thing I’d like to do again some time in 2010 though is some deep reading.

In sorting through some papers in preparation for a possible move, I found some old university lit class essays. Many of them are painful to read now. Not because they are poorly written (some are, some aren’t), but because a lot of them are obviously, blatantly parroting back whatever political or philosophical opinion the instructor of that course held. It’s really embarrassingly obvious that I had no ability to form a real opinion of my own. I know I wasn’t trying to ingratiate myself for the sake of good grades, though (surprise) all the papers I have that reflect back the instructor’s beliefs got very good grades. I liked these teachers, and I was fascinated by their opinions, and I think at that time I was unconsciously trying their worldviews on to see how they fit.

I’m quite a bit older now, and though I’ve continued to read voraciously, I haven’t read anywhere near as analytically, or as deeply, as I did in those classes.

For example, here’s a bit of an essay on The Duchess of Malfi:

Men like to ride horses to exhaustion in this play. “Castruccio is come to Rome, Most pitifully tired with riding post.” Ferdinand “hath took horse, and’s rid post to Rome.” Later in the same scene Bosola says, “Pluto, the god of riches, when he’s sent by Jupiter to any man, he goes limping, to signify that wealth that comes on God’s name comes slowly; but when he’s sent on the devil’s errand, he rides post and comes in by scuttles.” Keeping within the play’s metaphoric structure, we can believe that both Castruccio and Ferdinand have ridden to Rome on the devil’s errand…

I used to love to tease out textual clues like that, and find clever ways that the structure of something, or the images it referenced, supported character or theme. It was a useful pleasure when I was an actor, since finding out these little connections was the key to building a nuanced performance. But I’d guess in the last ten years I haven’t tried reading anything this deeply at all.

I recently finished a first read through Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, but even though that book really demands a close reading I found I wasn’t able to muster up the attention for it. I glossed a lot. Then, in doing some digging around online for other people’s impressions of the book, I found this essay that suggests that an odd, throw away reference that Pynchon put into The Crying of Lot 49:

In Mexico City they somehow wandered into an exhibition of paintings by the beautiful Spanish exile Remedios Varo…

In his essay Pynchon’s Inferno, Charles Hollander argues that this reference is meant to make you curious about Remedios Varo, lead you to try researching him, discover little information but be exposed to the name Marcus Terentius Varro (whose name is a cognate of the painter’s), an ancient Roman satirist who wrote in a style called Menippean Satire, a form which:

He developed the form into a medley, or mixture of humor, philosophy, song, and rhyme on any topic that struck his fancy at the moment, managing to scoff at all the fad and fashion of the time while avoiding, or submerging, any political bitterness he might have felt.
- Hollander:Pynchon’s Inferno

This is also the form that Gravity’s Rainbow takes, and Hollander is convinced this odd clue in The Crying of Lot 49 is Pynchon tipping his hand to anyone who happens to be looking, revealing the workings behind his chosen style.

Now, that’s all quite a stretch, and these days information on Remedios Varo is not hard to come by. Maybe Pynchon just knew his paintings, and one he remembered fit his purpose for the image he was looking for. This could be true even if he was intentionally working in the style of Menippean satire. This could all be essentially an elaborate conspiracy-theory-style chain of concoctions unintentionally invented by a source happy scholar digging for influences. But so far all the Pynchon I’ve read is very keen on conspiracy theories, and it does not seem so unlikely to me that he may be playing games with scholarly readers like this. His novels do echo the form of satire described.

Coming up with potential clues like this is the kind of depth I would like to go into again in reading something this year. I don’t know what yet. Maybe more Pynchon. Maybe something else.

A possibility is this great program I read about here, the St. John’s College Summer Classics in Santa Fe, New Mexico:

A Summer Classics seminar is not a lecture, nor is it a book club. At St. John’s, seminars are lively, in-depth, highly participatory conversations on the reading at hand. Discussions begin with an opening question presented by a tutor, but can take on myriad dimensions. Everyone contributes in some way to the conversation, bringing ideas to the table whether they have familiarity with the topic or not. Listening is just as important as speaking, as connections among ideas make for stimulating conversation. No previous knowledge of the author, text, or subject is required; participants should refer only to works the group studies together. Our conversations are not debates. Challenging others’ ideas or offering alternative thinking is encouraged as long as the goal is insight, not didacticism.

These week-long seminars take place in July, and are limited to 16 participants each. Groups are led by two members of the St. John’s College faculty, or occasionally, guests from other institutions.

Frankly it sounds like heaven. These last ten years have just burned by too fast. Time to limp a bit in Jupiter’s service.

(See how I brought it back around there!)

This osseus dome, once arched nobly over the seat of one man’s reason, now reduced by time to the state of a broken cathedral, abandoned, cast in plastic and sold over the counter at Puzzle Zoo.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

It’s an iffy recording of a good performance. If you already love this song you know everything about what I’m going to write here. If you don’t, but you want to, get the album Homogenic, put on some headphones, turn the volume way up, call up the pluto track, and listen with a vulnerable brain…

I can’t claim Björk as my savior – but I can say that there was a moment which I can still remember when her music became completely necessary for me. It’s not that I dismissed it earlier, it’s just that it was only music, sort of in the background, interesting in a kind of detached, intellectual way.

Then one night I was frustrated with some mess in life, and knocking about aimlessly in my apartment with Homogenic on a bit too loud, and pluto comes on. You know how that one goes. Few words, and much pained keening.

As it went on in that middle bit, where the ratcheting tense rhythm is cranking tighter, tighter, and her voice is just moaning in a grating key with more pressure, and more pressure… it might have been the mood I was in, or the music being too loud, or maybe both, but it was making me feel real rage. I really couldn’t think in actions, I was just irritated to the point of rage by the noise of the song and her voice and then, just when the whole thing was on the edge of unbearable, her anguished keen flips into this incredible squeak of delight.

It was like the back of my head flipped open at that squeak, and the fury I was feeling spread out into the space all around me as joy.

It seemed to me then that rage was just joy in a state of confinement, and you need to find a way to pop the pressure on it to let it out into the world. I was sort of ecstatic the rest of that night, due entirely to that one song.

I realized that Björk doesn’t actually make songs – she orchestrates emotional experience. I still turn to pluto for release when I can’t work myself out of an emotional corner alone.

Pluto is the god of death, and death is the conversion of flesh into ideal. Life is a ratchet of frustration, tightening only and never loosening unless you can find a way to just snap. That may seem horrible, but it isn’t. There are ways to snap beautifully, and spend all the energy stored in frustration in an explosion of joy. Snap the right way, and the explosion can be self sustaining, like nuclear fire. This song showed me how to die/change/be otherwise, when you need to, with a spastic blaze of grace.

What does it do to you?

After my previous post titled Printcasting I was contacted via comments by Dan Pacheco, who has founded a company actually called Printcasting that does a bit of what I was going on about in that post. I took a look through his company’s site over the weekend and it’s neat – so here’s some more info about it.

Printcasting – people-powered magazines

The basics are laid out in more detail here, but the main points as they appear to me:

• The Printcasting site provides an automated method for aggregating RSS feeds from any source into articles laid out in an automated fashion for printing, alongside ads.
• In addition, the site provides the ability to view the periodical online in a sort of page flipping fiew, and these can be distributed via a small variety of web based widgets.
• You do not have to make a magazine just to contribute articles. If you set your blog up with an RSS feed that delivers full posts, you can hook up your feed to Printcasting’s service and anyone on the service who is making a magazine can include your posts as articles in their publications.
• You do not need to provide your own content to make a magazine. You can use any of the registered RSS feeds to fill your magazine with content. You can also just do it all with your own content if you want, but you don’t have to.
• As an advertiser, you just set your ad up with the Printcasting service, and it is automatically placed in the magazines created by users. You do not have to do any negotiating. Ad placement will eventually cost a small fee, but at the moment I believe it is free.
• As a publisher, you do not need to solicit ads, they will be automatically placed in your magazine for you by the service.
• There is a plan to share revenue from ad placements with publishers.
• From what I can see, there is no built in step to automatically print your magazine, that is, I think, left up to you to arrange yourself once it is produced.

That seems to be the basics. Dig into the site for more detail. To me, the strength of this model seems to be the automated assembly, pretty hands off and helpful in creating newsletters and local interest small run, leaflet like periodicals. It doesn’t look like a newsstand magazine, it looks more like a newsletter, and the automated layouts are pretty basic and vanilla. It doesn’t look like you have much control over what the ads you accept look like or how they are placed, it all follows a basic set of templated looks that will not wow anyone in a graphic design way. But it is a quick, cheap, uncomplicated way to assemble information of interest to narrowly targeted groups into an easily distributable, printable format.

Another company that requires more upfront effort and design skill on your part, but produces a magazine that looks pretty much like the kind you see at newsstands, is MagCloud:

From their About Us:

MagCloud enables you to publish your own magazines. All you have to do is upload a PDF and we’ll take care of the rest: printing, mailing, subscription management, and more.
How much does it cost?

It costs you nothing to publish a magazine on MagCloud. To buy a magazine costs 20¢ per page, plus shipping. For example, a 20-page magazine would be four bucks plus shipping. And you can make money! You set your issue price and all proceeds above the base price go to you.
How are they printed?

MagCloud uses HP Indigo technology, so every issue is custom-printed when it’s ordered. Printing on demand means no big print runs, which means no pre-publishing expense. Magazines are brilliant full color on 80lb paper with saddle-stitched covers. They look awesome.
What do I need to do to participate?

You’ll need a PayPal account or major credit card to buy magazines, and publishers will need a PayPal account so we can pay you earnings. To create a magazine, you’ll need to upload a PDF, which means you’ll have to create your magazine in a program that outputs high-res PDFs like Adobe® InDesign.

During our Beta orders must be sent to a US shipping address.

This is a pretty cool looking POD magazine publishing service, which is capable of producing what appear to be really slick periodicals.

MagCloud looks like a real magazine. It doesn’t aggregate content for you, you have to do all the content and layout work, and produce a high res, quality PDF to send them, but from there they enable POD magazine sales, apparently worldwide, or at least that is the intent. The Beta seems limited to the US. You don’t seem to have to pay to set one up, your buyers pay per issue at a 20 cent per page plus whatever profit margin you tack on rate when they order one, and it looks like MagCloud will pass on your cut via paypal. MagCloud takes the orders, does the printing and mailing. All you do is all the layout and creation work, and upload files to the service. MagCloud does not help you find advertisers or in any other way subsidize your effort.

MagCloud doesn’t look like it gives you a fully readable online option, but it does provide a preview page flipper thing. Click the “show preview” button on this sample to see one.

I think MagCloud is an HP initiative pointed at selling the POD presses to many local print shops, but as a result it seems to set up a really classy looking POD magazine solution.

I wonder what comics pages would look like in one of these things?

The above two services are geared toward putting digital content onto a printed page. This next one looks like it is being used to put printed content into a slick digital presentation, and to serve as an online platform for native digital publications formatted in magazine fashion:

Issuu

From their About Us:

Issuu makes your publications look good

Issuu turns your documents into beautiful online publications. Publish to an audience of millions and get your message across to anyone, anywhere. It only takes a minute and it’s free.

Features and benefits

* Upload your documents and we turn them into professional online publications.
* Enjoy the best reading experience online (fullscreen with crisp vector graphics).
* Explore a living library with the web’s most interesting publications.
* Post/embed your publications anywhere online (Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, etc.)
* Get a high rank on Google and receive detailed statistics about your readers.
* Create a custom viewer design and integrate your publications on your website.

This looks really astonishingly slick. It might be a great way to make your POD MagCloud zine readable online as well. It has tools that allow embedding. For example, here is a back issue of Juxtapoz from their library:

There are many, many layers of POD/online publishing possibilities available, and more being born every day it seems. If you want to make beautiful things in both the virtual and real worlds, you have even less excuses not to do it. The tools to enable you are quite literally tumbling out of thin air into your lap.

Hat tips: to Dan Pacheco for Printcasting, Andrew Sullivan for MagCloud and Rick Evans for Issuu

Great discussion of Print on Demand is often had at Warren Ellis’ Whitechapel Forum.

I picked this one up this past November during the annual Give One Get One program. I’ve always thought this thing looked neat. In reality, the physical machine is very cool, but the OS on it, a GUI called Sugar over a custom Linux distro, is just awful. Supposedly designed not so much as an OS, but as a learning facilitating platform, the academics behind that atrocity literally tossed everything the western world has learned about computer interface design over the last 30 years and made up a new, arbitrary and very, very awkward interface themselves. It is seriously terrible. I defy you, as a new user, to write a simple text document, save it, close it, then find it again. I dare you. I’ll check back in on your progress in a couple of hours.

So extremely disappointed, I put the poor little machine aside for a while, and have only recently started carrying it around again and testing it’s ability to connect to wifi spots around the city. As a simple web browsing netbook, it’s actually not that bad. The custom browser is very, very simplified, lacking many things that would make life easier, but it is functional and its simplicity has the unintended virtue of focusing your attention. No series of 5 tabs loading different things simultaneously to juggle. Its eBook mode, with the backlight of the screen turned off, so you are reading a surface like Amazon’s Kindle is easily the killer feature of this machine. I can’t exaggerate how pleasant it is to read things in this manner. It is very, very nice. With the backlight off, the battery life also significantly improves.

But, sitting out in front of the coffee shop yesterday, and unexpected but interesting feature of the xo came to light – something like 7 or 8 complete strangers passing by stopped to ask me what this little computer was, and where did I get it! Some of these strangers were quite attractive!

I’m beginning to think the real killer feature of this little, green, rabbit-eared adorable button of a computer is it’s ability to stand in for a puppy or a baby as an accessory to attract strangers of the opposite sex in public places.

This boy and his mess will soon be parted.

My overall impression is that it wasn’t about characters or plot so much, though both of those elements were there. Character moreso than plot, which was really deliberately thin. It was about a mood, and about the way words sound in your head.

I haven’t read any other of McCarthy’s books, so I don’t know to what extent this is true of his work in general, but The Road really was an extended sort of echoing of dying words in the reader’s mind. It sort of felt like a tunnel of consciousness, like the only way you have to perceive the world is through the noise a word makes inside your skull when you’ve read it, and after you’ve read it, as it decays quickly away like a spent atom, you are lonlier than before you knew there was such a noise.

I may suffer from a lack of empathy, but I didn’t feel sorrow for the collection of vagabonds and cannibals desultorily winding down their empty existences in these pages. I felt more of a sadness coming to realize that the only way we know the world is through stories we tell ourselves, the only way we understand it is through the stories other people tell us, but ultimately the stories go away and there’s not much for the mind outside of stories.

I wouldn’t say it was depressing. Starkly meditative, maybe. I wonder if the film adaptation will be so deliberative.