astridv | (no subject)

Entry tags:

comic

(no subject)

via

mccloudtour: Scott McCloud has posted the promised chapter 5 1/2 of 'Making Comics'. "A short online extension to Making Comics' fifth chapter, covering some of the issues associated with creating color art and panel layouts for screen display. "

I would recommend this to anyone interested in web comics. Food for thought. Of course I've been aware that by scanning pages and posting them 1:1, I'm not exactly using the medium to its full potential. Posting online offers many possibilities, of which hypertext is just one... at the moment I'm quite happy to keep doing what I do, work in print format basically and use the net to find a ready audience... but it's something to keep in mind for future projects *ponders*

One advantage of having this chapter published online - he links directly to examples. To my shame I must admit I never really looked into web comics, and after following some of the links, I must say I've missed out.

Take a look at this: "Pup" Ponders the Heat Death of the Universe by Drew Weing... surreal and beautiful. Also, quite large - the whole strip consists of one giant panel so if you have a lo-speed connection, be prepared for a long time to load (it's worth the wait).

Also looking interesting: Nowhere Girl by Justine Shaw. I haven't read it yet, but the artwork looks fantastic. I'm torn between turning green with envy and being inspired. Choosing the latter. ***In other news, I went running today and yesterday, wearing a t-shirt. To my right, birds singing. To my left, daisies and dandelions blossoming. Well, better than last week's perma-rain, I guess.***via

yhlee: A Timothy Takemoto argues why Japanese would make a good international language. I believe he's not kidding and the funney is entirely unintentional.

Probably even funny if you aren't currently trying to hammer over 1900 Kanji into your head. I'm still voting for Klingon instead.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Thank you for that link to "Pup". Very nifty.

Shiny, isn't it. Almost feels like I, as the reader, am floating yourself.

myself, even. ;)

Personally I do feel a little depressed, that in it seems that the universe is in its middle-age. And in about 10 E9 years, the acceleration will tear everything apart to subatomic particles. It just seems to be enough time, to something like existence, which I would like to be truly infinite in some kind of form,

Personally I don’t see why Danish, not should be a universal language. It’s easy to speak, even my two year old niece, is beginning to speak it fairly well, so there. Ok some say that there are some pretty confusing differences between the talked language and the written language. But that is just because to makes it more interesting for school children to learn. Norwegians when they reformed their written language (so it became not so close to Danish, those ungrateful bastards) now they spell the words as they sound, how weird is that!

But joke a side, there was a program about the death of the small languages. I think they said, they reckon, that there were about 6000 languages, and most of them are becoming more and more marginalized. They talked with an ethnolog, who was studying, one of these small languages, and he told that in that language, that the word for a specific colour would depend of the gender of the objects that the colour was on. When that language is gone in 3 or 4 generations time, it will take away a particular way of looking at the world and the world, I think, would be poorer culturally.

Personally I do feel a little depressed, that in it seems that the universe is in its middle-age. And in about 10 E9 years, the acceleration will tear everything apart to subatomic particles. It just seems to be enough time, to something like existence, which I would like to be truly infinite in some kind of form,

That, uh, depresses you? Well, I sorta imagine the whole thing will start over again after everything collapsed unto itself. Otherwise it would contradict the whole concept of eternity, wouldn't it (says she who has no idea of quantum physics whatsoever)

re Danish: LOL
Personally I would argue that Danish isn't challenging enough for our young ones, so if we can't agree on Klingon, then let's take Finnish or Hungarian. Why stick with lousy four or five cases if you can have 15 or more. More = better. Trains the brain.

They talked with an ethnolog, who was studying, one of these small languages, and he told that in that language, that the word for a specific colour would depend of the gender of the objects that the colour was on.

Wow.
In Japanese, you use different words for counting, depending on what you count... like, people, cars, small things, flat things, cups (empty? full?), animals (of course if you're counting animals you have to differentiate between birds/rabbits and other animals. I think it also matters whether they're big or small animals).

Yeah, the rate these smaller languages are disappearing is a sad loss for our culture in general. There're some counterefforts, though. At Sinte Gleska university in South Dakota they're now teaching Lakota, I read somewhere. Probably just a drop in the ocean though...

Latest consensus is that the universe will not collapse back into the Big Crunch (to perhaps be followed by another Bang) Instead it looks like endless expansion - there is a repulsive force opposing gravity and the mass estimates were always marginal for deciding if it is closed (crunches) or open (expands indefinitely).

As to some languages going crazy on the gender & declension stuff, on top of positional grammar, strangely enough it appears that more primitive languages go for the extra redundancy in order to get across meaning. Simplified languages (English in some ways - not spelling!) have eliminated some of the redundancy/overkill.

Perhaps one reason so many Americans resist *really* learning another language well (the other being lack of opportunity to use it much for obvious geographic reasons).

Kanji is insane, definitely something which hindered mass education in prior centuries. OTOH English would probbaly be better off with 50-60 character in the alphabet for the different phonemes -- pronunciation would be so much simpler.

I have read that screwy English spelling can make a lot sense in that it helps reinforce a common language across longer distances, whereas "spell it like you say it" would lead to fragmentation as the spoken language *does* naturally vary in accent across the just the USA (or in the UK).

Perhaps one reason so many Americans resist *really* learning another language well (the other being lack of opportunity to use it much for obvious geographic reasons).

That, and there's just no pressing need since English will get you a long way in most places.

As to some languages going crazy on the gender & declension stuff, on top of positional grammar, strangely enough it appears that more primitive languages go for the extra redundancy in order to get across meaning. Simplified languages (English in some ways - not spelling!) have eliminated some of the redundancy/overkill.

I sometimes think our language has shed a few specifics that would be rather useful, for example when it comes to family relationships... there's no way to differ between aunt from the mother's and the father's side, or older/younger sibling, etc. These words existed but fell out of use.

English grammar is sleek and efficient but the spelling is crack. That actually evens out the degree of difficulty between German and English since the very simple German spelling makes up for the few additional articles and declinations. :)

OTOH English would probbaly be better off with 50-60 character in the alphabet for the different phonemes -- pronunciation would be so much simpler.

Eh, but a lot of the spelling difficulties are home made. I don't even think we'd need that many characters. Thinking of words like drought, naught, bought, thought... that's so inconsequential.

FWIW back in college I took some extra upper leve physics courses that only the physics majors normally took, the first year of quantum and an astrophysics course in which we derived and verified a lot of the fundamental equations. In quant we spent most of a quarter just doing all the math from the bottom up for just the *hydrogen* atom.

It was quite cool actually doing the "real" thing. Of course what we were doing was baby steps compared to professional physics, still the up close glimpse wa sfascinating.

Of course I've forgotten all but the highlights not, 20 year later :)

It sounds really fascinating. I do wish I knew more about physics... sigh. The basic physics, I mean, not the lofty stuff which sounds even more interesting, but, well, baby steps.

I did love "The Physics of Star Trek" by Lawrence Kraus. There, it is possible to explain this subject matter without confusing your audience or putting them to sleep. If only my physics teacher had know how to do that.

From the wikipedia about Dark Energy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy):
Implications for the fate of the universe

Cosmologists estimate that the acceleration began roughly 5 billion years ago. Before that, it is thought that the expansion was decelerating, due to the attractive influence of dark matter and baryons. The density of dark matter in an expanding universe disappears more quickly than dark energy, and eventually the dark energy dominates. Specifically, when the volume of the universe doubles, the density of dark matter is halved but the density of dark energy is nearly unchanged (it is exactly constant in the case of a cosmological constant).

If the acceleration continues indefinitely, the ultimate result will be that galaxies outside the local supercluster will move beyond the cosmic horizon: they will no longer be visible, because their line-of-sight velocity becomes greater than the speed of light. This is not a violation of special relativity, and the effect cannot be used to send a signal between them. (Actually there is no way to even define "relative speed" in a curved spacetime. Relative speed and velocity can only be meaningfully defined in flat spacetime or in sufficiently small (infinitesimal) regions of curved spacetime). Rather, it prevents any communication between them and the objects pass out of contact. The Earth, the Milky Way and the Virgo supercluster, however, would remain virtually undisturbed while the rest of the universe recedes. In this scenario, the local supercluster would ultimately suffer heat death, just as was thought for the flat, matter-dominated universe, before measurements of cosmic acceleration.

There are some very speculative ideas about the future of the universe. One suggests that phantom energy causes divergent expansion, which would imply that the effective force of dark energy continues growing until it dominates all other forces in the universe. Under this scenario, dark energy would ultimately tear apart all gravitationally bound structures, including
galaxies and solar systems, and eventually overcome the electrical and nuclear forces to tear apart atoms themselves, ending the universe in a Big Rip. On the other hand, dark energy might dissipate with time, or even become attractive. Such uncertainties leave open the possibility that gravity might yet rule the day and lead to a universe that contracts in on itself in a "Big Crunch". Some scenarios, such as the cyclic model suggest this could be the case. While these ideas are not supported by observations, they are not ruled out. Measurements of acceleration are crucial to determining the ultimate fate of the universe in big bang theory

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only