The Big Picture has a good collection representing the decade in news photography.
Making music
Making Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up”. Pretty cool to see how the song is constructed, makes me believe I can sit down and bang out the next great club hit.
First FontFont specimen
5 Dutch Type Designers was the first FontFont specimen, published in 1990. There’s a PDF of the original Dutch version available for download, as well as some commentary and recollections.
Alice as mathematical satire
The absurdity in Alice in Wonderland is often attributed to drugs or a dark trip into the subconscious. For her PhD work, Melanie Bayley examined some of the most popular scenes from a mathematical perspective, which is summed up in Alice’s adventures in algebra. Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Caroll) was a rather conservative mathematician, who disagreed with many of the new mathematical theories emerging during the 19th century.
The madness of Wonderland, I believe, reflects Dodgson’s views on the dangers of this new symbolic algebra. Alice has moved from a rational world to a land where even numbers behave erratically.
I don’t imagine that Tim Burton’s new Alice in Wonderland will delve too deeply into mathematical theory.
Plotter Drawings
Plotter drawings from the 1960s. These are probably some of the earliest examples of digital artwork. The Wikipedia entry has some more information about plotters.
Pen plotters print by moving a pen across the surface of a piece of paper. When computer memory was very expensive, and processor power was very limited, this was often the fastest way to efficiently produce very large drawings or color high-resolution vector-based artwork.
That would’ve been some fun programming.
Underground type
A Typeface for the Underground takes an in-depth look at the history of the Johnston typeface used by Transport for London. You might also be interested in Ken Garland’s book, Mr Beck’s Underground map, detailing the history of a design icon.
Geeks and games
Gaming the System is an article from Rands describing the relationship between geeks and their games.
It’s also why we love games — they’re just dolled up systems — and the more you understand this fascination with games, the better you’ll be at managing us.
In a nutshell, geeks love to figure out how things work, improve anything they can and be the best at what they’re doing.
Airbag Industries’ 2009
Greg Story offers his review of 2009. This is my new desktop wallpaper.
3D Mandelbrot
The Mandelbulb is an attempt to create a three dimensional equivalent to the famed Mandelbrot fractal. There’s information about the math behind the Mandelbulb, many images, links to videos and more. If you want the quick version, Wired posted a brief overview and a gallery of images.
Cormac McCarthy on The Road
A discussion with Cormac McCarthy and John Hillcoat. There’s some information about the film adaptation of The Road, his next novel, and insight into McCarthy’s process.
I’m not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.
McCarthy also decided to part with his typewriter, it sold at auction for more than a quarter million dollars. He’s not going digital though, a friend bought him the same Olivetti model to replace the old one.