Diablography

Today's Mood

2009-07-10T08:31:00.001-04:00

Drunk, originally uploaded by mayorbarry17.

Tree Face

2009-07-08T08:21:00.001-04:00

oh my god it's you, originally uploaded by whalesoap.

Disgusted

2009-07-06T11:15:00.001-04:00

Face in the Shower, originally uploaded by supah.

Today's mood: Bad.

2009-07-03T10:42:00.001-04:00

Bad Mood T, originally uploaded by lexillustrator.

Logoglyphs Explained: Cartography

2008-07-07T21:22:00.003-04:00

'
Cartography: Relating to the art or technique of making maps or charts.

What better thing to use for a image relating to maps than topographic lines, like you'd see on a map? The bands between the lines gradually change from blue at the outside to light green in the center; I took symbols from Version 4, laid them over this design, and made them semi-transparent, sort of like tissue paper. Then I made the topographic lines bright red.

Logoglyphs Explained: Cabinetmaker

2008-07-06T19:50:00.002-04:00

'
For this design ( a cabinetmaker is, of course, an artisan specializing in making fine articles of wooden furniture, including cabinets) I envisioned two cabinet doors, with a frame all around and inlaid wooden bands zigzagging across the front. Wood colors, of course--in this case various shades of tan.

Logoglyphs Explained: Brambleberry

2008-07-06T19:41:00.004-04:00

'
I'm pretty sure this design was applied to a different word before I used "brambleberry," because those types of bushes (a prickly shrub of the genus Rubus, including the blackberry and the raspberry) don't have 3-petaled flowers (if any do at all). But I did what I did. The lines that make up the glyph design are widened to bands, and the "flowers" laid over them, and the whole thing done in plant-y and flower-y colors.

Logoglyphs Explained: Bacteriology

2008-06-25T22:14:00.004-04:00

'
Bacteriology: The study of bacteria, especially in relation to medicine and agriculture.

I used the Version 1 symbols, which I then rounded to look more like, well, bacteria. Or to share the roundness of bacteria. The shapes would look better if I had hand-drawn them; I pretty much automated the process in Adobe Illustrator and settled for the result.

I don't remember how I came up with the color scheme. When using a variety of colors like this, I color the logoglyph the same way one would color a map, using as many colors as necessary to make sure no two adjacent shapes share the same color. This one uses four, plus the background color.

Logoglyphs Explained: Accouchement

2008-06-24T21:57:00.007-04:00

.
Accouchement is just a fancy French name for giving birth. I went ahead with Version 1 for this design, and since women usually give birth lying down, I laid it on its side. I made most of the shapes sort of skin-colored, and then ran a stream of red through it, symbolizing the blood and nutrients that go through the umbilical cord. Then, just for fun, and to add some little highlights, I colored two rectangles pink, for girls, and two blue, for boys.

Name Generator Roulette, Game 1

2008-06-24T21:12:00.009-04:00

'
Kottke.org mentioned this random name generator, a useful thing if you're writing a novel and need to come up with a character's name, or if you want to play the game I invented, Name Generator Roulette.

Here are the simple rules: click on the name generator and look up the names in Google. Points if the person exists in real life, no points if not. (Give yourself as many points as you want. If the person is in Google, report on the one who gets the first hit.) Half credit if the man's name turns out to belong to a woman, or vice versa.

So here's the inaugural game:

Men:
Kenton Lavery: Does not appear in Google
Stephen Carroll: The first hit is for a lecturer in English at Santa Clara University

Women:
Sheridan Goble: A man, deceased, a former resident of Floyd County, Kentucky
Kathleen Smith: A professor in the Duke University Department of Biology

Points this round: 1,750

Fun times for all!

Logoglyphs Explained: Acciaccatura

2008-06-23T21:17:00.007-04:00

.
The definition of Acciaccatura is:

An ornament note that is one half step or one whole step below a principal note and is sounded at the same time as the principal note, adding dissonance to a harmony.

I used the Version 1 symbols for this design, and the definition of the word gave me the idea of taking the design made from the combined symbols, duplicating it, and slightly shifting it down and to the right. The word didn't suggest any particular colors; I just chose a color scheme I liked.

The Making of Loglyphs, Part II

2008-06-22T00:06:00.007-04:00

The first set of symbols I made I'll call Version 1:I don't know at what point I decided to make variations on the symbols, but the first thing I did was take the lines in Version 1 and make them curvy. This is Version 2:For Version 3, I didn't just make them curvy, but made them complete (or nearly complete) circles: Then I did the opposite, changing the diagonal lines to horizontal and vertical lines, for Version 4:--------------------

But what to do with these things?

The idea came to me somehow to arrange the symbols in a 3 by 4 grid, which would give me 12 spaces. And to figure out which symbols would go in those spaces, I simply chose a 12-letter word. The idea then came to me to let the definition of the word determine the variations and colors I would use in each design.

I went through the American Heritage Dictionary and found 191 12-letter words. Then I obsessively sketched designs in a graph paper pad, redrew a whole bunch of them in Adobe Illustrator on the computer, and then chose and colored the best ones, until I ended up with 48 final designs.

In future posts I'll talk about how I came up with each of these designs.

The Making of Logoglyphs, Part I

2008-06-09T18:32:00.025-04:00

I was doodling one day on a crossword puzzle, filling in the squares like this: I got to thinking about how many different ways I could combine these four triangular shapes in a 2 by 2 grid.I came up with 256.

Some more doodling got me from this:to this:
to this:
which I thought would make a cool sculpture--maybe out of curved pieces of copper tubing--if I put a couple of the shapes together.

But how do I find the best combinations of 256 different symbols? To narrow it down I picked the 26 I liked best and assigned each to a letter of the alphabet. That made it easier to find the best pairings.

A little more doodling got me from this:to this:to this:
A bunch of those shapes, arranged in a 2 by 2, 3 by 3, or 3 by 4 grid, looked really cool, sort of in perspective, but not:
Part II coming soon.

Logoglyphs: The Book

2008-06-02T21:55:00.002-04:00

Cover, originally uploaded by Vividp. Clicking on the image will take you to the book pages on flickr.

A couple of months ago I "published" a book. I put that in quotes, because it wasn't a situation where I had an editor and publisher and copies were sent to bookstores across the nation; I published it through Blurb, which in the old days would have been called a "vanity press," but these days is called a "personal" or "print-on-demand" publisher. Blurb allows anyone to print as few copies of a book as they prefer, even if it's only one.

When I discovered Blurb I saw a perfect opportunity to put into book form some designs that I had been working on for years. I downloaded Booksmart, the Blurb software, attached every page as a jpeg image, and very soon had a beautiful hardcover book to proudly display on my mantle.

With a softcover copy sent to my mom, and another to my wife's parents, there are now three copies in existence. And since we live practically on opposite coasts, you could say they're blanketing the nation.

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 12 - Green River, Utah

2008-05-28T22:10:00.005-04:00

Another bad photo. Sorry.

This is not the city of Green River--which is 56 miles to the south--but the river itself. This stretch is south of Roosevelt (36 miles) and flows into Desolation Canyon, the deepest canyon in Utah and a popular area for white-water rafting. The distant mountains on the left are called, coincidentally, the Roan Peaks (see previous entry). On the right is Flat Top Mountain.

KMZ file

This concludes our tour.

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 11 - Roan Plateau, Colorado

2008-05-26T23:09:00.003-04:00

I was intrigued by how the land here gradually rises up to the south, ending in steep gulches and dropping down to the Colorado River. (The gulches remind me of Alpine canyons, just like you'd see in the Swiss Alps, except they're a lot dryer. Which is why they're called gulches.)

It took a bit of research on the internet before I found out the rise is called the Roan Plateau. I also found out it's the site of a dispute over whether the BLM should allow oil and gas drilling. And from the looks of things, they went ahead and allowed it, because those cleared spots in the photo contain drilling rigs and industrial buildings.

The big gulch on the left, leading down to the Colorado River Valley, is Parachute Creek Canyon; the one to the right of it is the Roan Creek Valley. As for the...gulch?...valley?...in the center of the photo, I looked and looked and couldn't find a name for it. Every gulch that branches off from it has a name, but not the thing itself. I know that Piceance Creek runs through it, so it might be called Piceance Creek Basin, but I also know that the bigger basin that contains Roan Plateau is called Piceance Basin, so I don't know, and perhaps I never will.

KMZ file

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 10 - Grand Mesa, Colorado

2008-05-24T22:30:00.004-04:00

What caught my eye here was the big snow-covered mesa, which is called Grand Mesa. To the right of the mesa is Grand Junction. The canyon in the foreground is Parachute Creek Canyon. Coming into the picture from the left is the Colorado River Valley, with, appropriately, the Colorado River running through it, and, alongside the river, I-70. The valley beyond that, just in front of Grand Mesa, is the Plateau Valley.

KMZ file

Photos:

Grand Mesa

Grand Junction

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 9 - Dillon Lake, Colorado

2008-05-22T22:51:00.005-04:00

The frozen reservoir in the center of the picture is Dillon Lake, named after the town of Dillon, which had to be moved when the dam was built in 1963. The lake is the largest water storage facility in the Denver water system. Dillon is a "suburb" of Silverthorne, the largest town in the county (Summit County).

The mountains in the foreground are the Vasquez Mountains. At the top of the valley in the foreground is St. Louis Peak and to the right is Byers Peak, at the center of the Byers Peak Wilderness Area. I don't know the name of the valley, but St. Louis Creek runs through it, so maybe it's St. Louis Valley.

The ski area to the left is Keystone Resort. To the right is Copper Mountain. Breckenridge is beyond the reservoir.

KMZ file

Photos:

Dillon Lake

Silverthorne

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 8 - Pikes Peak, Colorado

2008-05-21T20:34:00.008-04:00

Pikes Peak is the snow-capped mountain in the background. It was named after Zebulon Pike, an early explorer of the area. Although 29th among Colorado's highest peaks, it's the most accessible, with several easy ways to reach the top, including a road and a cog railway. Once a year it's the scene of an automobile and motorcycle race called the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. And, according to Wikipedia, the view from Pikes Peak was the inspiration for the song "America the Beautiful."

Right in front of Pikes Peak is Colorado Springs, best known as the home of the the United States Air Force Academy.

Also in this view, though I don't know exactly where they are, are the Peaceful Valley Scout Ranch and a former Titan nuclear missile silo, near the town of Elizabeth.

Photos:

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 7 - Cheyenne Bottoms, Kansas

2008-05-19T20:06:00.005-04:00

Another bad photo, but, again, the landmark is easy to pick out.

Cheyenne Bottoms is a state wildlife management area (and a stop for migrating whooping cranes) between Claflin, Great Bend, and Hoisington (which calls itself the "Gateway to Cheyenne Bottoms"). Hoisington was featured in a segment on "This American Life," which talked about the night a tornado hit during the prom and the prom-goers didn't know it.

KMZ File

Photos:

Cheyenne Bottoms

Hoisington

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 6 - Kanopolis Lake, Kansas

2008-05-17T22:04:00.005-04:00

Okay. Yes. I know the photo is horrible. The camera focused on the specks on the window instead of the distant landscape outside. But the lake is a recognizable shape, and I didn't have any problems finding it in Google Earth.

The lake is between Salina and Ellsworth. On the south end of the lake is Kanopolis Lake State Park, the first state park in Kansas, established in 1955.

Nearby Salina was the site, in 2005, of the takeoff and landing of Steve Fossett's record-breaking solo, non-stop flight around the world.

KMZ File

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 5 - Watts Bar Nuclear Plant, Tennessee

2008-05-17T21:53:00.006-04:00

The Watts Bar Nuclear Plant, on the Tennessee River, is run by the Tennessee Valley Authority. It apparently took a really long time to build: construction began in 1973, and it didn't go on line until 1993. The town on the opposite bank, behind the plume of steam, is Forest Grove (though there doesn't seem to be much of a town there).

KMZ File

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 4 - Tellico Lake, Tennessee

2008-05-17T21:15:00.007-04:00

This lake was formed when the Tellico Dam was built in the 1970's on the Little Tennessee River. The dam almost wasn't built, because of a small endangered fish called the snail darter. A lawsuit brought against the Tennessee Valley Authority to save the fish went all the way to the Supreme Court. The dam was finished only because congress exempted it from the Endangered Species Act in 1979.

The lake inundated the site of Tuskegee, a Cherokee village that was the reputed birthplace of Sequoyah, inventor of the Cherokee alphabet.

KMZ file

Photos:

Tellico Lake

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 3 - Maryville, Tennessee

2008-05-15T20:35:00.004-04:00

What caught my eye was the rows of buildings in the foreground; they're part of a smelting plant owned and operated by Alcoa (it's actually located in the city of Alcoa, right next door). Maryville is where Sam Houston spent his youth. It's also the birthplace of Melanie Hutsell, one of the most annoying cast members of Saturday Night Live, although she did a good Jan Brady.

KMZ File

Photos:

Maryville

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 2 - Wears Valley, Tennessee

2008-05-14T22:03:00.008-04:00

Wears Valley is west of Pigeon Forge. It saw its first white settlers in the 1790's, and was the scene of conflicts between the settlers and the Cherokee. That curved line along the hillside in the lower right is a line of cabins, called--I think--The Havens at Hedgewood, part of The Preserve Resort. Beyond the valley is the northern border of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

KMZ File

Photos:

Wears Valley

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - April 22, 2008 - Part 1 - Weaverville, North Carolina

2008-05-13T22:24:00.014-04:00

From the first Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet:

Whenever we fly, I'm compelled to look out the window and try to figure out where we are. If I could, I'd stay in constant contact with the cockpit so they could ID for me every landmark we pass, but that's not possible; and I found out I can't use my GPS receiver on the plane--so I have to settle for taking pictures out the window, guessing our general vicinity on a road atlas, and then when I get home trying to find the landmarks on Google Earth.

It's actually a fun way to do it, with all the detective work involved, and when I can't find something for a long time and then suddenly there it is, what a feeling of accomplishment I get.

So here is Part 1 of the second official chapter of Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet.

The town where the two roads converge is Weaverville, where O Henry used to spend some time. To the right is the French Broad River, so named because it was broad and flowed into French territory (as opposed to the English Broad River, which flowed into English territory). In the background, at the left, is Asheville. Here it is in Google Earth:

KMZ File

Photos (courtesy of flickr):
Weaverville
French Broad River

Juried In: "Re: No Subject"

2007-12-19T09:20:00.000-05:00

I got a piece accepted into another show at Visual Art Exchange, a show of nothing but abstract and non-objective art, my specialty. The show runs January 4-24.

"Catacombs", mixed-media, 24" x 30"

I entered two pieces. This one didn't get in:

"Earsplitting", mixed-media, 24" x 32"

Sale for the Season

2007-12-17T22:46:00.000-05:00

"Meeting Minutes," Ink on Paper

I framed this pen and ink "drawing" and put it in the latest show at Visual Art Exchange, a holiday sale with everything priced at $300 or less. I set mine at $85; I hope that's a price no one will be able to resist.

The Many Faces of Delicate Arch, Part 13

2007-12-17T22:32:00.001-05:00

Delicate Arch from the bottom of bowl, originally uploaded by Taka4.

It looks like it's shot through a fisheye lens, but it's not. Wide-angle, maybe, but not fisheye. The fisheye look is from the roundness of the cirque below the arch. I like how the image is divided between reddish-brown and blue, with this bright red-orange object jumping out in the center.

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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, P art 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12

Obsessive Doodle XXXI

2007-08-25T11:35:00.001-04:00

417532, originally uploaded by Vividp.

Pass It On: Joy Ang

2007-08-25T11:24:00.000-04:00

via Drawn!
who got it from microscopiq
who got it from Fabulist

Old Favorites: Rivertrout

2007-08-15T20:44:00.000-04:00

I bookmarked this site eight years ago, and I'm glad to see it's still around. Excellent heartfelt and personal writing.

Obsessive Doodle XXX

2007-08-10T23:33:00.001-04:00

733661, originally uploaded by Vividp.

The Many Faces of Delicate Arch, Part 12

2007-08-06T13:39:00.001-04:00

And now to back to a series I've been neglecting:

Delicate Shadow, originally uploaded by jeffnstephb.

This photo is similar to the photo in Part 5, but I like it better because there's no foreground or background clutter and it's more vivid. I like that there's nothing but sky behind the arch and it's environs, and I love the little silhouetted people above the arch's shadow.

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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, P art 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11

Obsessive Doodle XXIX

2007-07-30T21:54:00.001-04:00

4147839, originally uploaded by Vividp.

Obsessive Doodle XXVIII

2007-07-26T21:42:00.001-04:00

13262, originally uploaded by Vividp.

Obsessive Doodle XXVII

2007-07-20T22:31:00.001-04:00

14837, originally uploaded by Vividp.

Timpanogos Summit Hike (Wish I Were There)

2007-07-18T21:51:00.001-04:00

Primrose Cirque, originally uploaded by Mark Griffith.

Mark Griffith has put up on Flickr a beautifully detailed chronicle of a hike he took with his family up Mount Timpanogos, my favorite mountain. I took a couple of hikes up the mountain when I was a teenager (reaching the summit only once) but I won't go into that; this is Mark's story. Enjoy.

Being a geo-nerd, (or is it carto-geek?) I had to find on a map the locations Mark mentioned. And to help anyone who may be reading this, I made the following illustration, with the help of Google Earth (click to see large version). The image Google Earth uses unfortunately shows the mountain in early spring, when nobody would climb the thing, but you get the idea. By the way, the house we used to live in is just above the first "d" in "Saddle."

Obsessive Doodle XXVI

2007-07-18T21:09:00.001-04:00

18511, originally uploaded by Vividp.

Obsessive Doodle XXV

2007-07-16T22:13:00.001-04:00

29200, originally uploaded by Vividp.

Obsessive Doodle XXIV

2007-07-15T20:57:00.001-04:00

34338, originally uploaded by Vividp.

My doodles are now on flickr.

Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet - June 5, 2007 - Dallas, Texas to Salt Lake City, Utah

2007-07-07T14:30:00.001-04:00

Whenever we fly, I'm compelled to look out the window and try to figure out where we are. If I could, I'd stay in constant contact with the cockpit so they could ID for me every landmark we pass, but that's not possible; and I found out I can't use my GPS receiver on the plane--so I have to settle for taking pictures out the window, guessing our general vicinity on a road atlas, and then when I get home trying to find the landmarks on Google Earth.

It's actually a fun way to do it, with all the detective work involved, and when I can't find something for a long time and then suddenly there it is, what a feeling of accomplishment I get.

But I figure, why keep all this information to myself? So here is the first official chapter of Sightseeing from 30,000 Feet.

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I took this first photo (sorry for the low quality) just west of Dallas, and I was able to recognize the body of water on the map laid out on the tray in front of me. It's Possum Kingdom Lake, in the triangle between Graham, Breckenridge, and Mineral Wells. Here's the spot in Google Earth:

KMZ File

Possum Kingdom Lake is a reservoir formed on the Brazos River. The only reference I can find on how the lake got its name is that the surrounding area makes for a veritable possum paradise. The Baker Hotel, a 14-story hotel in Mineral Wells (out of the frame to the left) was built in 1929, claiming to be the second hotel in the U.S. with a swimming pool, and the first with an Olympic-sized pool. It closed in 1972, but there is a grassroots effort to restore it to its former glory.

Photos (all on flickr, unless otherwise noted):
Possum Kingdom Lake
The Baker Hotel (from The Portal to Texas History)
Mineral Wells
Breckenridge
Graham

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Eighty miles farther on I took this snapshot, showing Lake Catharine and Lake Davis, near Rhineland and Benjamin. Here they are in Google Earth, labeled because they're hard to see:

KMZ file

The lakes were made by damming Dutchman Creek, which empties into the Brazos River. Here we are in Knox County, largely a farming and ranching area. The main crops are cotton, wheat, grain sorghums and truck crops (fruit and vegetable crops grown to be trucked to distant markets), and if I had a better eye I would be able to tell which fields are growing which crops, and which are fallow.

I assume the reservoirs were formed for irrigation.

Photos:
Benjamin

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Another 35 miles and we have what I think are cattle feedlots along the North Wichita River near Chalk.

KMZ file

This is in Cottle County, where the main agriculture is cattle and some kind of crop, probably wheat or sorghum. The thing that caught my eye and compelled me to take this photo was the bird-shaped white patch in the top center of the photograph and near the center of the Google Earth screenshot. Close inspection in Google Earth shows it to be some kind of sandy area along a creek.

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This is Palo Duro Canyon, near Wayside, on the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River, 36 miles southwest of Amarillo.

KMZ file

"Palo duro" means "hard wood" in Spanish. Sometimes called the "Grand Canyon of Texas," Palo Duro Canyon is the second largest canyon in the U.S. Just out of frame to the right is Palo Duro Canyon State Park.

Photos:
Palo Duro Canyon

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This is Amarillo. A city of nearly 200,000, it has too many attractions and too much history to write about here. My focus was going to be that circular area toward the bottom center of the photo (it's what caught my eye from the plane), but I can't for the life of me figure out what it is. All I see on close investigation in Google Earth is a grassy area with some dirt paths across it, surrounded by water. My guess is that it was going to be the central area of a business park that never got built.

KMZ file

This is the south end of town, with I-27 running through it (from bottom center to left).

Photos:
Amarillo

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The contrast in this photo is wacky because I had to really mess with the levels to be able to see the details in the image.

KMZ file

The near ridge is Latir Peak, in the Latir Peak Wilderness Area, overlooking Questa. These are the Taos Mountains, part of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The white area on the far left is the Molycorp Questa molybdenum strip mine, once a significant employer of folks in the town, now closed. The river beyond Questa is the Rio Grande, with the Rio Grande Gorge and the Wild Rivers National Recreation Area just behind the Guadalupe Mountain west of town.

Photos:
Latir Peak
Questa
Wild Rivers National Recreation Area

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This photo is of a spot north of Durango, Colorado, and just south of the Durango Mountain ski resort (visible on the right in the Google Earth screenshot).

KMZ file

Finding this spot in Google Earth was an ordeal. I scanned every square mile of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and New Mexico for a medium-sized lake with a little lake next to it, and I never found it because the satellite shot showed the lakes covered in ice and I didn't recognize them as bodies of water. What I had to do was find the last shot on the trip--the Colorado River in Utah (although I thought it was the Green) and trace a straight line back to Questa, New Mexico.

Electra Lake is the big lake; the long, smaller lake to the right is Lake Purgatory. The river below the lakes is the Animas River. The cliffs are called the Hermosa Cliffs. Highway 550 north from Durango is part of the San Juan Skyway scenic byway. In the background are the La Plata Mountains.

Photos:
Electra Lake
Durango Mountain
San Juan Skyway

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The Palisade, next to Gateway, Colorado. (It's the solitary, flat-topped rock formation in the center of the photo.)

KMZ file

The mountains in the distance are Utah's LaSal Mountains. The river is the Dolores River. Gateway (population 61), is home to the Gateway Canyons Resort and the Gateway Auto Museum, both founded by Discovery Channel founder John S. Hendricks. Also planned in Gateway is a multi-use development called Anasazi Village, which leads me to wonder: in a town of 61 people, who will live there? It is only 45 miles from Grand Junction, however, so maybe it will be a bedroom community for that city.

Photos:
Gateway

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The Colorado River in Utah.

KMZ file

This is east of I-70, between Cisco, a ghost town next to the freeway (in the top left), and the Colorado border. In the foreground is Westwater Canyon, the first whitewater stretch of the river in Utah, popular because it's only a forty minute drive from Grand Junction, Co. Our friend the Dolores River (the river that runs through Gateway, Colorado) empties into the Colorado in the top left corner of the image.

Photos:
Cisco
Westwater Canyon

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And that's the last stop on our trip. The flight took us across Grand County, Carbon County, and we entered Utah Valley airspace, passing right over the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon before we turned north toward Salt Lake City.

Obsessive Doodle XXIII

2007-07-06T23:29:00.001-04:00

Obsessive Doodle XXII

2007-07-02T21:20:00.000-04:00

Obsessive Doodle XXI

2007-06-30T23:49:00.001-04:00

Obsessive Doodle XX

2007-06-29T21:40:00.000-04:00

Inspired this:

Future Island

2007-06-29T15:29:00.001-04:00

Future Island, originally uploaded by cuibel.

Puddles and the Sky

2007-06-29T14:59:00.001-04:00

Puddles and the Sky, originally uploaded by cuibel.

Lake Objects in Orbit

2007-06-29T14:26:00.001-04:00

Lake Objects in Orbit, originally uploaded by cuibel.

A Feather on a Rock

2007-06-29T14:25:00.001-04:00

A Feather on a Rock, originally uploaded by cuibel.

The Yellow Bush

2007-06-29T14:19:00.001-04:00

The Yellow Bush, originally uploaded by cuibel.

Speaking of Antelope Island . . .

2007-06-29T11:58:00.001-04:00

Antelope to Stansbury Pano, originally uploaded by cuibel.

Antelope Island is an arid, treeless--some would say ugly--island in the middle of a barren, salty--most would say ugly--lake. It would take a person with a special vision to see the beauty in this area, and it would take someone with an incredible vision to depict its beauty.

Charles Uibel (aka cuibel) has an incredible vision, because he sees this beauty and is able to capture and depict it in his photos of Antelope Island and the Great Salt Lake. His photographs are dramatic and moving and breathtaking and visually stunning.

Some more of my favorites of his--all found on flickr--will follow in subsequent posts.

Oh, so that tunnel leads to the Atlantic Ocean!

2007-06-28T12:29:00.000-04:00

Inspired by another entry at Bill Rankin's Radical Cartography called The Errant Isle of Manhattan, I created my own Manhattan scale comparison.

Antelope Island sits in the middle of the Great Salt Lake, directly west of Bountiful, Utah, where I grew up. I woke every morning to the view of that island outside my window, and in all the time I knew it I wasn't aware that it was so big. When I first did the comparison of Antelope Island and Manhattan in Google Earth, I had to double- and triple-check, because I couldn't believe Antelope Island was actually bigger than Manhattan, that 1.5 million people could potentially live on that piece of land. (And when I have more time to play with Photoshop, I'll imagine what that would look like.)

The reference in the title is to a myth once held that the Great Salt Lake was connected by an underground tunnel to the Pacific, and that's why it was salty.

Obsessive Doodle XIX

2007-06-27T22:24:00.000-04:00

Obsessive Doodle XVIII

2007-06-26T23:05:00.001-04:00

Obsessive Doodle XVII

2007-06-23T00:22:00.000-04:00

This inspired an artwork I'll be turning into a painting soon:

Salt Lake City Panorama

2007-05-31T13:04:00.001-04:00

Salt Lake City Panorama, originally uploaded by LeggNet.

Wintry Skyline

2007-05-31T13:01:00.001-04:00

Wintry Skyline, originally uploaded by LeggNet.

Obsessive Doodle XVI

2007-05-24T22:35:00.001-04:00

Comic Strip Synchronicity, Part 4

2007-05-22T22:03:00.000-04:00

This time it isn't a synchronicity of subject matter, it's a synchronicity of one word: three comics in Monday's paper, all next to each other, started with the word "sorry."

Family Circus:

Dennis the Menace:

and Bizarro:

Obsessive Doodle XV

2007-05-22T22:01:00.001-04:00

Obsessive Doodle XIV

2007-05-19T20:23:00.001-04:00

Obsessive Doodle XIII

2007-05-14T22:08:00.000-04:00

Obsessive Doodle XII

2007-05-12T22:37:00.000-04:00

Obsessive Doodle XI

2007-05-10T22:02:00.000-04:00

Obsessive Doodle X

2007-05-09T22:12:00.000-04:00

Obsessive Doodle IX

2007-05-08T22:25:00.000-04:00

Obsessive Doodle VIII

2007-05-05T12:20:00.000-04:00

Obsessive Doodle VII

2007-05-04T22:42:00.000-04:00

Obsessive Doodle VI

2007-05-03T21:49:00.000-04:00

Obsessive Doodle V

2007-05-02T22:51:00.000-04:00

The Many Faces of Delicate Arch, Part 11

2007-04-30T22:14:00.001-04:00

Delicate Arch from "Behind", originally uploaded by Chris Diersen.

This isn't a beautiful photograph, but it's a remarkable one, considering that the photographer risked his life to get it.

Says Chris Diersen, the photographer: "...I think it's a not often-seen view of Delicate Arch because of the position from which it was photographed; from a spot on the slickrock where I probably shouldn't have been without ropes. It was a while ago, but I remember having that "uhh... this is a little sketchy" feeling all the while I was taking these shots."

I don't suggest anyone do what he did, but I do have to congratulate him on getting a unique shot. And I like how he shows the arch along with its archless brothers, all in a row. (Perhaps the brothers will all be arches, too, eventually. Like in a few thousand years. I guess we'll have to wait and see.)

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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, P art 8, Part 9, Part 10

The Many Faces of Delicate Arch, Part 10

2007-03-23T22:00:00.001-04:00

Delicate Arch, sunrise, originally uploaded by duoli.

The photographer says, on this photo's Flickr page: "Most photographers come here for sunset. Did not do my research, I was here at the wrong time of the day."

Well he has nothing to apologize for, because the photo is stunning. (And, as he appears to be a professional photographer, he probably doesn't mean it anyway.)

The morning light is soft and beautiful, and you can sense how cool and quiet a morning it is. I love this photo.

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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, P art 8, Part 9

The Many Faces of Delicate Arch, Part 9

2007-02-11T18:49:00.001-05:00

Utah::Arches National Park, originally uploaded by mike_s_etc.

Technically, this isn't a great photograph, but I like the different point of view. I don't know if the spot where this picture was taken was meant to be a place to view the arch; I prefer to think of it as the photographer simply hiking or driving down the road, looking over and saying, "Hey; there's Delicate Arch."

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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8

Juried In Again!

2007-02-09T19:46:00.000-05:00

Kimball Mill, Collage

For what it's worth, I'm 2 for 2 in juried art competitions. This show is called "Line," and is again at the Visual Art Exchange. It was juried by Linda Johnson Daugherty, Curator of Contemporary Art at the North Carolina Museum of Art (and wife of nest-builder extraordinaire Patrick Daugherty).

The image above isn't of the actual piece: it's a mock-up I did beforehand. The colors are pretty close, but the papers I used have a variety of textures.

New Urbanism's Bad Rep

2007-02-07T22:07:00.000-05:00

I picked up the Fall 2006/Winter 2007 issue of Harvard Design Magazine the other day. The issue is entirely dedicated to the subject of urban design, and I was disappointed to see that New Urbanism came out looking bad.

The magazine opens with an essay by urban design educator and architecture critic Michael Sorkin, who appears to have nothing but contempt for the New Urbanism movement, complaining of the "dreary and uniform translation of principles to practice, the weirdly religious insistence on 'traditional' architectural form, the dubious bedfellows [?], and, most especially, the weakness of most new urbanist product, almost invariably car-focused, class-uniform, exclusively residential, and without environmental innovation."

Further on, in a round-table discussion between urban design professionals, the attitude is still negative: mentioning Sorkin's essay, Paul Goldberger, also an educator and architecture critic, praises his "deft comparisons between New Urbanism and religious fundamentalism." And according to urban design professor Rodolfo Machado, "The form produced by New Urbanism is highly limited. It's usually houses for white people in the South."

Now, I know these perceptions are wrong. (And when I have more time I'll rebut them point by point.) But they persist. How do we overcome the bad rep New Urbanism has in some circles?

Comic Strip Synchronicity, Part 2

2007-02-05T21:32:00.000-05:00

Two comics in the Sunday paper had someone whooshing either up or down the stairs, or both.

Zits:

and Blondie:

The Many Faces of Delicate Arch, Part 8

2007-02-03T12:10:00.001-05:00

USA-West Delicate Arch by Night, originally uploaded by Thomas Reichart.

This is, I think, the only photo of the arch of its kind posted on Flickr. It's spooky and mysterious. The photograph was created by making a 15-second exposure while shining a flashlight on the arch--I assume sweeping the light back and forth across its face while the shutter was open.

(In the comments for this photo, commenter Ken Lund said that someone once doofusly built a bonfire to light the arch. A clever idea, I guess--I'd like to see how it turned out--but extremely against the rules.)

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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7

The Many Faces of Delicate Arch, Part 7

2007-01-27T22:30:00.001-05:00

Delicate Arch below, originally uploaded by jiggerpress.

I love this one for all the usual reasons: interesting angle, good contrast, good details, a nice gradation in the sky. And for some reason photos look so much better with a frame like this one has.

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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Stained Glass

2007-01-21T22:36:00.000-05:00

I just finished a stained-glass class at Sojourners, a studio and school in Cary. This was the project I did.

18" diameter. Now hanging in our dining room window.

I like to think I took to stained-glass making. I really like doing it, and plan to make some more pieces.

The Many Faces of Delicate Arch, Part 6

2007-01-18T20:23:00.001-05:00

delicate_arch_12, originally uploaded by kubokubo01.

This week we go from telephoto to (I think) wide angle. And a vantage point that seems pretty hard to reach. Is that cirque easy to get out of once you get inside? It doesn't look like it. Anyway, I like the deep, zooming perspective, and the detail in spite of the lack of light.

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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

The Many Faces of Delicate Arch, Part 5

2007-01-11T21:43:00.001-05:00

Arch Profile, originally uploaded by refractor.

As the caption of this photo on Flickr says: "An interesting perspective on the Delicate Arch." What I love about this photo is that the arch isn't easily recognizable, given the angle of the photo, but the shadow is. Also, with the telephoto effect--with the exaggerated foreshortening and the weird horizon--the washed-out sky and the lack of human figures, the scene looks artificial, like a scale-model, something that really appeals to me in a photograph.

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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

The Many Faces of Delicate Arch, Part 4

2007-01-06T08:13:00.001-05:00

Delicate-Arch, originally uploaded by Wiggum03.

I like this one for the angle, the curve of the sandstone, the cloud that offsets the arch, how the colors are pale but the contrast is right on. As far as the angle goes, a lot of people photographed the arch from unusual angles, but this one keeps it recognizable.

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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

My "Thoughts in a Dry Land"

2006-12-30T00:19:00.000-05:00

Fenced Sunset, originally uploaded to Flickr by Topherdale.

I just finished a book by Wallace Stegner, Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs, in which he writes about, among other things, the visual character of the arid west and our perception of it. In a chapter called "Thoughts in a Dry Land" he writes:

Perceptions trained in another climate and another landscape have had to be modified. That means we have had to learn to quit depending on perceptual habit. Our first and hardest adaptation was to learn all over again how to see. Our second was to learn to like the new forms and colors and light and scale when we had learned how to see them.
Scale is the first and easiest of the West's lessons. Colors and forms are harder. To eyes trained on universal chlorophyll, gold or brown hills may look repulsive. Sagebrush is an acquired taste, as are raw earth and alkali flats.
[There is] a process of westernization of the perceptions that has to happen before the West is beautiful to us. You have to get over the color green; you have to quit associating beauty with gardens and lawns; you have to get used to an inhuman scale; you have to understand geological time.

I grew up near Salt Lake City, in a region perched right on the border between the Great Basin and the Rocky Mountains. The aridity Stegner talks about was something I should have been used to. Yet I always preferred the greener parts of the country, especially the hardwood hills of New England and the pine-laden Pacific Northwest. I refused to believe that I lived in or anywhere near a desert, because deserts were ugly.

It was my mom who brought about my change of heart. An artist all of her adult life, she gained her second wind when she and my dad rented a duplex out in the desert. For twelve years my dad had commuted 200 miles a day to his job at an army base in Utah's west desert. Then, when their last child (me) went off to college, they rented an on-base duplex, where they lived during the week, returning "home" on weekends.

While my dad worked, my mom spent her days painting the landscape around her. Being an artist, she was already attuned to seeing the beauty in any corner of Earth, but being immersed as she was in this landscape, she grew not just to appreciate but to love the things she painted: the dry brown grasses of the valley floors, the sage-covered foothills, and the lavender-shadowed mountains.

Simpson Mountain

As I saw each successive painting she made, I began to see the desert through her eyes, and I realized it wasn't ugly at all; it was just beautiful in a different way, a way I had to learn to recognize.

--------------------

Ten years later my wife and I took a trip to California with her parents, and the drive home took us from Reno straight across Nevada on US 50, the "Loneliest Road in America." We drove 300 miles from west to east through a seemingly endless succession of mountain passes and long, narrow valleys. (The term for the geography of the area is "Basin and Range.")

At a stop for gas about halfway through the trip, my father-in-law said to me, "Isn't this the ugliest, most boring scenery you've ever seen?" I said, "Not at all. I love it." And I did, thanks to the new way of seeing that my mom had helped me discover.

My father-in-law, even though he, too, grew up in the West—albeit a slightly less arid Eastern Montana—thought I was crazy.

Obsessive Doodle IV

2006-12-29T00:14:00.000-05:00

The Many Faces of Delicate Arch, Part 3

2006-12-28T23:33:00.001-05:00

Delicate Arch in Snowstorm, originally uploaded to Flickr by Dribnenki.

This is a nice one. The photographer probably would have preferred to be there on a sunny day, but what a unique shot, the famous arch emerging from the fog.

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Part 1, Part 2

Coming Full Circle

2006-12-26T00:07:00.000-05:00

I received a great book for Christmas, Rendering in Pen and Ink by Arthur Guptill, which has, among the more spectacular examples of pen-and-ink drawing, this one by Franklin Booth (image courtesy of Bud Plant Illustrated Books).

While looking for more information about Franklin Booth, I realized he was the artist who made one of the most beautiful drawings I've ever seen--one I discovered probably four years ago-- this interior of a cathedral (also courtesy of the Bud Plant site):

I don't know if you call it serendipity, or coincidence, or what, but I love it when connections like this happen.

The Many Faces of Delicate Arch, Part 2

2006-12-20T22:52:00.000-05:00

originally uploaded to Flickr by debblynne.

I like this one because the focus isn't on the arch; it's just one in a line of rock formations running along the top of a sandstone ridge. I like that it's a silhouette but not quite: you can still see detail in the rock. The sky is perfectly contrasted, and that little figure between the arch and the next formation to the right adds a narrative element.

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Aerial photo for context:

Part 1

Datatops

2006-12-19T22:19:00.000-05:00

A few years ago I was messing around with some data and came up with what I thought was a unique way of displaying it. My idea was to arrange data points as tiny squares bunched along a vertical axis, with the highest numbered point alone at the top and the lowest alone at the bottom, and all the others arrayed, in some way, from highest to lowest in between. Because the figure comes to a point at the top and the bottom, I call it a datatop.

Below is one I put together of the average per capita GDP of all the earth's nations (data from 2000):

I know it's not a perfect way of presenting the information. For one thing, the arrangement of all the points between the top and bottom is somewhat arbitrary; the only reason the data points are divided the way they are is just so they'll fall in an even distribution. And each division is divided into multiple rows, otherwise some rows might be several times wider than the figure is tall.

Yet it seems to be a good way to show statistics at a glance, to easily see where things fall in relation to an average or a benchmark. And the dots can be color coded for a further level of information. (In the example above, the colors show which continents are mainly represented above and below the poverty line. I just looked at a color-keyed map that showed the same thing, which is probably a better way, but at least in this graphic every country gets equal representation: the little ones aren't lost like they would be on a map.)

I was able to use datatops in a real-life application when I made a report of how long design jobs took to get through our department—from marketing or regulatory changes to print-ready artwork—in relation to our goal of a three-week turnaround (see below). a quick glance shows that most jobs did not meet the goal (a surprise to my bosses, who had a vague idea but weren't really paying attention). The individual squares are colored according to what kind of component the artwork was for and where it was being produced (for example, leaflets for third parties tended to take the longest).
Provided anybody at all is reading this blog, I sure would like some feedback on this concept.

The Many Faces of Delicate Arch, Part I

2006-12-14T22:59:00.001-05:00

Delicate Arch, originally uploaded to Flickr by Forget Me Knott Photography.

Delicate Arch is probably Utah's best known landmark. A beautiful piece of rock located in Arches National Park, it has been featured on a stamp and on the state license plate, and, judging from the number of entries in flickr, it is well-photographed. I wanted to see how many different photos of the arch I could find on flickr, not all from the same viewpoint, but from as many different ones as possible. So I hereby introduce an ongoing series, The Many Faces of Delicate Arch.

Our first entry (above) is the best example I could find of the straight-on shot. The lighting is just right, the contrast perfect.

As a bonus to any interested in placing the arch and the photographer in context, I've included a satellite photo (courtesy of Google) with an icon showing the photographer's likely position.

Sale of the Season

2006-12-11T21:40:00.000-05:00

I have another piece in a Visual Art Exchange show. This time it's "Sale of the Season," an unjuried show of pieces that cost under $300.

I don't have a photograph of the piece I did, because the one I took before I delivered the piece to the gallery looked horrible. But here is a mock-up I did in Adobe Illustrator:

The sale ends December 30.

Salt Lake City at night

2006-12-11T19:06:00.001-05:00

Salt Lake City at night, originally uploaded by BitHead.

Takes my breath away. What an opportune shot. The white line up the middle of the picture is State Street. In the foreground is North Salt Lake, and at the top is Utah County (the visible area stretches from Highland to Payson).

This is my first attempt at blogging directly from Flickr. Way cool how it works.

Obsessive Doodle III

2006-11-17T21:37:00.000-05:00

Obsessive Doodle II

2006-11-05T15:02:00.000-05:00

Obsessive Doodle I

2006-10-22T20:20:00.000-04:00

I have this thing I do at work, something I just can't resist: when someone gives me a sticky note with a message on it, I have to doodle. Any free moments I have (waiting for the computer to process, talking on the phone) I work on these memo-based designs. I started out just outlining the letters, but I got bored with that and evolved it into something more. I've built up quite a collection, and I figure I might as well start showing them here.

I therefore present the first in a series of Obsessive Doodles (actual message made illegible, I hope):

Photoblog Synchronicity

2006-10-09T11:00:00.000-04:00

Due, perhaps, to some sort of psychic bond, Heather Powazek Champ and Joe Holmes both have pictures of water lilies on their sites.

(Heather's photo was actually posted way back on September 24, but she must have left it there and not put up anything new, knowing that one of her fellow photobloggers was going to put up a shot of a similar subject.)

I love both photos, but I love Heather's especially, because when I first saw it, I thought it was a Monet painting.

Are you Dave Parker?

2006-10-07T18:40:00.000-04:00

I'm not vain enough to google myself, because I know I won't find anything. However, I know there are (unfortunately for me) plenty of other David Parkers in this world. (I've received more than one phone call from a collection agency looking for one of them, and I get misdirected e-mails for two others who work at my company.) Therefore, inspired somewhat by Dave Gorman and his quest for others of his kind, I decided to use Google to see who this David Parker guy is.

According to Google, David Parker is:

A beauty contestant photographer
A retired professional baseball player
A sound re-recording mixer in the film industry
A sign-language entertainer
A developer of dynamic photorealistic 3-D graphing software for math and physics visualization
An IT director
A British landscape photographer
A member of New Zealand's parliament
A computer science professor
A B-movie director
A computer consultant
A consultant theologian
A(n amateur?) travel photographer
A religion professor
A restorer of old buildings
An economics professor
A cinematographer/scriptwriter
A mathematician
An associate professor of environmental science and engineering
A conceptual artist
A university director of career development
A journalist
A chemistry professor
A math professor
A physician and anti-child-labor activist
A professor of geomatics
An actor
An illustrator
A reviewer on amazon.com
A lawyer
A business professor
A writer
A soldier killed in Vietnam
A graduate student in neuromuscular biomechanics
A business professor
A commercial real estate and development expert
A systems administrator
A lawyer
A web designer
A soldier, lost in Vietnam (officially listed as MIA)
A microbiology professor
A shoe store
A law professor
An orthopedic surgeon
An actor
A history professor
An audiology professor
An education professor
A racquetball player
A telecommunications adviser
A systems technologist
A systems programmer
A therapist

When I got to the link leading me to ZoomInfo and a list of over 200 David Parkers, I gave up.

Why can't my name be Hormoz Kazemzadeh?

My Routes

2006-10-06T12:41:00.000-04:00

Inspired by "Bill's America", a personal map project by Bill Rankin at Radical Cartography, I created a personal map of my own, but on a more local level.

The map traces every route I traveled during the space of a month.

For each route I traveled I drew a 1/2-point line, and for each time I retraced that route I added a 1/2-point of thickness to the width of the line. It's pretty easy to tell where on the map my house is, and where I work.

Con-tin-u-ity

2006-10-03T16:10:00.000-04:00

I was talking to my kids, and for some reason I said something about continuity.

"Continuity?" asked my 11-year-old daughter. "What's that mean?"

My son, who's 17, said, "C'mon, you can figure it out. Break it down: 'con'..."

And I took it from there. "Yeah. Let's see: 'con,' as in convict, or someone who's in prison; 'tin,' like the metal that cans used to be made of; 'u,' as in 'u-turn;' and 'ity,' as in 'itty-bitty.' So 'continuity' is an itty-bitty prisoner holding a tin can and making a u-turn!"

I kill me.

Why I Love Flickr

2006-10-02T12:08:00.000-04:00

My family took a day-trip with me yesterday to Hanging Rock State Park. I took the camera and was able to get some pictures of the exhibit in the visitor center, which I helped design when I was with Design Dimension, and I snapped some good shots of the kids on the hiking trails. But when we arrived at the first of the park's waterfalls my batteries went dead.

Not a problem, though, because I was sure I would find plenty of pictures of the Hanging Rock waterfalls on Flickr. And sure enough, I did. So here, courtesy of shelly_bean, is the picture I didn't get to take: