The Space Toast Pages

Matthew Rasmussen's journal of journals on various topics of interest, published here, there or somewhere since 1999.

Things That Just Seem Kind of Sleazy Now

• Facebook flirting
• Sites that spell out a word by including the domain suffix (e.g. http://fluf.fr)
• Neo-burlesque
• Car murals
• Anyone Oprah approves of
• The whole "my ad looks like it was shot for YouTube" thing
• The Reagan Presidency
• Weezer
• Every news channel but The Weather Channel

New Population Map Images

Work on the Population Map continues. Below are some test renders from last night. Click for high-resolution images.

The Animation:Master project file is 5.5MB in size, culled from about 7.5MB of data. Some of the random colors chosen by the script make neighboring states hard to distinguish, which will be corrected in jEdit with find/changes. The enormous Yukon/Koyukuk Census Area in Alaska, with an average of one person every 22.5 square miles, is so close to the ground plane that it's causing the software to glitch. The fill lighting is perhaps a bit too strong while facing west, and the key a bit dingy overall.

Griping aside, this project is coming along well in my opinion.

Moleskin Notes

These were my original scribbles for the population map project. I try to work as much out on paper as I can before moving to the computer.

Gawker Steals My HR Comic

How sarcastically flattering.

Here is Gawker's featured shirt of the day:

And here is the very first Human Resources comic strip, number 1 of 41, from September 2004:

Here's how it works. The HR comics were popular with my fellow grunts at the job that inspired them, and were widely circulated on MySpace. (They still get a few dozen hits a month.) Someone saw the strip, liked the punchline, and submitted it to Gawker. They couldn't spell children.

I guess I should be a little flattered that it was voted highly enough to get a shirt made.

But at least when design firm Pylit liked my Tape Case Bike Light, they were decent enough to pay me to rewrite the article for them.

Fun With Data

I started work on a project a little while ago, and it's probably past time I started blogging it. My intention was to produce a population map of the United States, county by county -- essentially, a map of the country's other topography.

Each cylinder represents one county or equivalent (e.g. an independent city, Louisian parish, or Alaskan census area). The circular area represents the land area, the height its population density, and the volume of each cylinder its population. The cylinders are instanced Animation:Master models generated by a script.

The population and land area data come from the U.S. Census Bureau web site. Location data is approximated from Census Burea .bna outline files made available on the Princeton web site by Robert Sedgewick and Kevin Wayne of the 2004 Election "Purple Map" fame.

The first version of the script could build one state at a time. With 254 counties, the most of any state, this is Texas:

The second could produce an arbitrary number of states with random colors, but each had to be loaded by hand as soon as the script finished with the previous. This is New England, where I was born and raised:

The first version of the script that could construct the entire United States took over 14 hours to run and had several bugs, one of which limited it to 99 counties per state. This is its first output:

Right now, I have debugged the script, analyzed its output for missed counties, and am working at sanitizing the input data to avoid screwups. I hope to have a complete work in progress by the end of the weekend.

Signup for Sandy

Having little besides time at the moment, I've decided to try out a new productivity tool. IWantSandy.com is an email-based natural language calendar/to-do notification service. It's by the original creator of the Blosxom CMS that runs the Space Toast Pages.

There was no setup required beyond email, password and confirm password. Thus far, I've sent the service an email asking it to remind me to call a staffing agency that's been doing some work on my behalf at 1PM. The message was in the following form:

Remember to call Tigres Pileser at the Windy City Senate at 555-555-5555 at 1PM.

In theory, IWantSandy.com will send a reminder to my inbox at 1PM today. Supposedly, it'll also store the contact, company, number, and so forth for retrieval at a later date.

We'll see how it does.

You Can Put a Pig in a Dress, Too

This weekend, as part of my ongoing project of pretending to be my age, I picked up my first decent coat in Freeport, Maine.

Now to do something about everything else. This could take a while. Maybe I'll start with the hair.

It's a Record

My roommates have gone through an entire roll of toilet paper in one day. Ladies, if any of you are looking for a nice young man to settle down and, I dunno, move in with... let me know.

They Tried to Destroy the Metal

Things I'm Embarrassed I Sort of Enjoy

• Jenna Malone
• The Westway theme song
• ArtDungeon.net
• Confrontation
• Slice-of-life stories
• Algebra
• Nerdcore
• Making do
• Wait Wait Don't Tell Me

It's Time for Another Good Idea/Bad Idea...

Inkscape: Replacing Static Palettes With Dynamic Swatches

Filed as a feature request on Inkscape's Sourceforge page:

The only major problems with Inkscape's workflow have to do with fill and
stroke selection. Without an object selected, the Fill and Stroke window
is greyed out, preventing the user from selecting a style prior to working
in it. This is fairly logical from a programmatic object/attributes
standpoint, but to an artist it's very back-to-front -- we don't expect to
begin drawing with a crayon and then change it to a marker. Likewise, in
everyday drawing one tends to flip back and forth between a few
commonly-used styles, but the only way to return to a style in Inkscape is
to draw a path, select another object containing the desired style, copy,
reselect the new object, and paste the style into it.

Replacing the color swatches at the bottom of the window with dynamic
swatches made up of previously-used styles -- including fill, stroke,
opacity, blur, etc. -- could improve Inkscape's workflow a great deal. The
current swatches take up a great deal of space onscreen but only serve to
duplicate part of the Fill and Stroke window's functionality.

With dynamic swatches, making changes in the Fill and Stroke window with no
object selected would create a new swatch. Clicking on a previous swatch
would bring it back to the first position and assign its style to the next
object drawn. I've put together a mockup of what this might look like.

"Windy City" Enters Its First Screenwriting Competition

My first feature screenplay, "Windy City," has been entered into the 2007 ASA International Screenplay Competition. The quarterfinalists will be announced by February 28, 2008, with the semifinalists coming out April 30 and the final winners being announced at the awards ceremony at the end of September, 2008.

As much as I dread (and typically fail) at self-promotion, it's nice to be back on the contest scene. Æsop's Council of Mice was my last animated film to play the film festival circuit, following the relative success of my award-winning debut Marboxian. Owing mainly to financial difficulties, I wasn't able to do much with Mice, and I've had to focus on making a living since.

It's been mentioned a few times here, but maybe it's time to introduce the thing. Windy City is a classic city mouse/country mouse story written by someone who's been both. It has airships and fantastic cities, natural and manmade disasters, and a whole laundry list of other exciting things. But that's not why you'll fall in love with it. The real movie is about a boy from the valley and a senator's daughter from the city -- Dan Assurbani and Nineve Sherrib -- and how their lives meet and grow more and more complicated.

Windy City started life as a treatment six or seven years ago. At about this time last year, I dusted it off and set about cleaning it up. Somehow the treatment became a full first draft by April, and I had some friends with a bit of theatre experience over to do a cold readthrough. I sat on the lessons I learned from hearing it out loud, and the remaining issues I had with it, picked at it for the next few months as life got complicated again, and finally -- in four days at a friend's house in coastal Maine -- burned through to a second draft in late August.

It's been an interesting year. Wish Windy City luck.

! Proper Usage

Software: Inkscape

Retired Addiction

"Aria: The Natural"

Longer and less plot-heavy than the first series. Great for chilling out with some weights and stretches before bed.

A Different Hill

In my dreams there's another Boston.

Where the Fenway and the E train should be there's an expanse of rundown, uninteresting concrete buildings. Maybe there's another line south of the E train.

Last night, after the flat concrete section came a neighborhood of steep hills with equally rundown platforms, roughly where Roxbury should have begun.

To the west, where Brookline should have been -- or at least the no man's land between the D train and Coolidge Corner -- was a shabby, Allston-like, busy Y-shaped intersection. There was a place I needed to go which was on the far side, behind the intersection, and hard to reach.

To its west, the ground sloped steadily upward for a mile or more. At the top (very high up), looking down over the city, was an abandoned set of concentric concrete terraces, enormous, an expanse of disused parking around a building that wasn't used anymore. Sumac and other fast-growing trees were taking hold heavily on the slope.

One night, there was a posh place above MassArt. The street sloped gently upward and broke at a compact building with a glass foyer. The main street curved to the right there. Another, smaller street broke off just before the curve, behind a wedge of brick brownstones, and continued up the same hill; it was much more neglected, and seemed to be where people lived. Maybe that hill was the same as the first. Maybe they were all the same hill.

Oprah Winfrey in Haiku

Scorn a man who says
Only what you want to hear

And now Doctor Phil

The Bestiary of Geekdom: Wikipedian

Added "Wikipedian" to the Bestiary of Geekdom.

Amazon.com's MP3 Store

Overall I'm pleased with the Amazon mp3 store. Good interface. Good prices. Previewing tracks and albums is intuitive, the samples are high quality, and you don't wind up with a desktop full of little .rm files after previewing them all.

The selection can be lean, even with slightly out of band tastes. I can only find one full VNV Nation album, while Rotersand turns up a remix album, and Seabound is MIA. That said, discovering new acts based on what you already know is easy and -- dare I say it -- fun, at least in the heavily incestuous world of electronica.

I didn't enjoy having to install an application to download full albums. I also didn't enjoy being forced to purchase using "one click" -- why can't I shop and then check out? I read through the terms of service, and there's no mention of watermarking or inclusion of my account info in the files, but I wouldn't call that conclusive. Will I get a nastygram from Amazon if someone swipes my SD card? Hopefully we won't find out.

Once I'd made my purchase and installed the application, the downloads were quick. On my Mac, the Amazon application created an "Amazon MP3" folder in my music folder and generated subfolders for artist and album in the iTunes style. The tracks were automatically imported into iTunes, although I found it odd that the application didn't create a playlist of the album. One question I haven't found an answer to is whether, like in iTunes, I can purchase the remainder of an album for the (discounted) album price if I have already purchased tracks individually.

Bottom line, Barry Adamson's "King of Nothing Hill" sounds great in iTunes, will play in TCPMP on my Palm Zire and can ride a thumb drive to my client onsites. At the same album price offered on the iTunes Store for a track that's locked to play only in iTunes on my own machine, I'd call that a deal.

Series

The web is littered with incomplete projects, and there's no reason for it. Typically, the author of a podcast, webcomic, art or even written blog series simply grows tired of keeping an open-ended project alive. Updating drops off, then links die or the server stops responding. Lives change and obsessions evolve, but why should so many great projects die a heat death?

Ignore the web for a moment and think about television. Television series are finite. Even "Meet the Press" (USA), "Coronation Street" (UK) or "Hockey Night" (Canada) are purchased by their respective broadcasters in set batches of episodes. These are called "series" in the UK, or, a bit less accurately, "seasons" in the US.

It's a good model. Rather than simply beginning an open-ended project, why not commit to a set "series?" If the project is successful, commit to another series. If interest wanes, tie it off at the expected ending and move onto something new.

To help with the process, I've dashed up a little web 2.0 gizmo. Input episode number, total series length, and series number (if applicable), then copy and paste the code for a little button into the entry's page on your site. JavaScript is required to produce buttons but not to display them, though older versions of Internet Explorer may have trouble displaying them correctly without running the included script.

Happy serializing.

Series:

(blank)123456789 0123456789

Episode:

(blank)123456789 0123456789 of (blank)123456789 0123456789

Copy and paste this code into your page:

Retired Addiction

"Doctor Who," Series 3

DIY Coms

So let me get this straight. Now I get to watch...

• Shitty commercials
• Shitty commercials that look like they were made by amateurs
• Shitty commercials that were made by amateurs

"Dead Dog" by Nicholas Ozment

Pseudopod Horror Podcast #055

Not a bad story. The language was very well used. I found the black dog myth and the narrator's guiltless infidelity a bit hard to lash together thematically, and some of the descripive passages and long flashbacks made my attention wander.

But I have a request. Referencing the "mini generation gap" comment I made on "The Apple Tree Man," could we hear a bit more from the under 40 crowd on future Pseudopods? I'm sure doing abhorrant things with a wife and kids at home is viscerally arresting once you have them, but trust me: down here, clawing our way into a dead and cynical global economy, there is horror aplenty.

Notes on the Matewan "Massacre"

From a description in Christopher M. Finan's "From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America"

The Matewan "Massacre" would make an interesting, if challenging film. Starts out with a classic Western-style showdown. Escalates to open warfare.

"Passengers on the Norfolk and Western trains went through the battle zone crouching on the floors of the cars while glass crashed overhead."

• Sid Hattfield (28). Police chief, former miner. Shot Albert C. & Lee Felts. Gunned down on courthouse steps.
• Albert C. Felts. Shot mayor Cabbell Testerman. PI for Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, deputized in neighboring town. Hired to evict fired miners.
• Cabbell Testerman. Mayor & town druggist. Authorized the arrest of the detectives for carrying arms within town limits.
• Miners. Payed in company scripp. Fired when they joined unions.
• Baldwin-Felts Agency Detectives. Seven killed by miners in initial gunfight, rest fled across river.
• President Warren G. Harding. Sent in Federal Troops.

OUTSIDE

• Rev. John Haynes Holmes. Eloquently denounced the violence on both sides.
• The ACLU. Only a few years old. Spoke out against the underlying causes.
• The courts. Widely abused injunctions to suppress meaningful picketing. Used sedition laws unevenly to ban violent pro-union publications while allowing employer publications to advocate violence openly.

A Chart of the Pressures Facing an Essentially Straight Modern Woman

Concept: An attempt to understand said topic, rendered in the form of a nautical chart.

Software: Inkscape

Download:

• PNG image, 640x2048 pixels
• PNG image split as wallpaper, 1280x1024 pixels
• SVG, unlimited resolution

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License.

See Also: My previous infographic of the second Lancet study of Iraqi War Deaths at one per pixel, and photos of "the island" near my home town in Maine.

Admiral Bulletin

A game of storytelling
Rules for v0.1 (first beta)

[This document pertains to the version 0.1 rules. $file::bulletingame is the latest version.]
[Printer-friendly version]

Admiral Bulletin is a storytelling game set against a '30s pulp adventure backdrop. 3-6 players cooperate to tell a classic adventure in 9 chapters. There are no winners or losers, no stats, and no dispute resolution -- just rewards for bringing the awesome. Players begin by deciding what genre themes are allowed, deciding on a title, and coming up with locations. Play is a simple matter of speaking as many lines as you're allowed every round while trying to work in certain events that must take place in the chapter. As the game advances through three acts, these events change subtly, pushing the story toward its thrilling conclusion.

1. SETUP

To get started, players will need:

• 1 to 5 dice (six-sided)
• Counters (beads, pennies, etc.)
• Scrap paper

Optionally, players can print off from this site:

• A game sheet
• Event cards
• Character cards

One player elects to keep the game sheet. His or her job will be to keep track of Chapters and Locations.

Put a pile of counters into the middle of the table and give each player 4. These are the Awesome. Every piece of the Awesome is equal to one natural speaking breath.

Prepare three columns for Character cards somewhere on the table. These columns will track Protagonists (Pro), Neutral (Neu) Characters, and Villains (Vil). Characters are represented by a name on a piece paper. Two Characters are required in the Protagonist column at the start of play: Admiral Bulletin and Miranda. (See APPENDIX A. - CHARACTERS)

2. THEMES

Themes give a rough sanity to the game by deciding its boundaries. Themes must be chosen unanimously. Players may select as many or as few Themes as they'd like -- none at all is often a good place to start. (For available themes, see APPENDIX B. - THEMES)

3. TITLE

Players now choose a title for the Bulletin book they're creating. (Classic examples include Admiral Bulletin and the Snows of Tan Ana, Admiral Bulletin and the Lost Fleet, Admiral Bulletin and the Eudoxian Delay and Admiral Bulletin and the Foreign Star.) Record the Title on the game sheet.

4. LOCATIONS

Each player now secretly writes down four locations.

Every chapter takes place in one location. Locations can be as specific (The British Museum, The H.M.S. Reliant) or as general (France, The Pacific) as a player likes, as straightforward (Shanghai, The South Pole) or as intangible (Among the Ruins, At Tea) as need be.

The first player writes down "Eppings on High St." as the location for Chapter 1 and initials it. A Bulletin book always starts here, at Bulletin's headquarters.

Play proceeds to the right. The next player selects one of his or her Locations, and announces it as the Location for Chapter 2. This is recorded on the game sheet, along with the player's initials. The next player to the right may now choose one of his or her Locations, or return to one which has been used previously. Continue choosing locations in this manner until Chapters 1-9 have all been filled.

5. EVENTS

Before Chapter 1 can begin, the Events that take place within it must be decided. Roll 5 dice, and place the 5 Event cards corresponding to the dice rolls into a pile in the middle. (Printable Event cards are available on this site.) Add one additional, special Event card: The Hook. This is the Event that allows the player to end the Chapter. A Hook may not be played until all other Event cards have been used.

The player who rolled the location of the Chapter chooses one Event from the pile. Continue to the right. The next player may select any of the remaining events. Continue until all are gone, including the Hook.

Events behave differently depending on the Act of the Chapter in which they happen. (For all Events, listed by Act, see APPENDIX C. - EVENTS)

6. CHAPTERS

We're about ready to begin Chapter 1. The person who selected the Location (check the initials on the game sheet) starts. He or she announces the Chapter number and Location. All dialogue hereafter during the Chapter should be story content.

As previously stated, each of the 4 pieces of the Awesome a player begins with equal one natural speaking breath.

To begin, the first player slides one piece back toward the pile and speaks the first line. He or she continues until all four pieces have been used, and then recovers the 4 pieces for his or her next turn.

Example:

Lets say another player liked the bit about the fire in this example. He or she may award the speaker more of the Awesome from the pile in the middle -- completely on a whim. Use the Awesome to reward what you enjoy. The next time it is the first player's turn, he or she will be able to use the additional Awesome to speak more, or hang onto it for later.

Each player also has one or more Events which must be worked into the story. To play an Event card, he or she narrates its payload into the storyline and discards the card to the center of the table.

Example:

The cast is tracked with Character cards (which need only be scraps of paper with a name on them) in the Protagonist, Neutral and Villain columns. CAST Event cards allow addition and subtraction of Characters in these columns. SWITCH cards allow the movement of Characters from column to column.

Example:

When all Events for a given Chapter have been achieved, the player holding the Hook card is free to conclude the Chapter on any of his or her subsequent turns.

The procedure for beginning a Chapter repeats. Players roll the 5 Events for the next Chapter, add the Hook, and divide them up. The player who initially chose the Location for the Chapter announces the Chapter number and Location, and begins speaking.

7. ACTS

Chapters 1-3 make up Act I. This is the Act for introductions, both of characters and the overall contents of the story.

At the beginning of Chapter 4, Events change slightly. Act II -- Chapters 4-6 -- is the Act of switching. SWITCH Events can go in either direction, pushing the secondary cast regularly between columns. Your MISC. Event becomes a change of overall objective for the team.

Act III -- Chapters 7-9 -- are about danger and, ultimately, resolution. Characters can no longer be introduced with CAST Events. SWITCH will only resolve Neutral Characters into Protagonists or Villains. MISC. Events trigger dire snap decisions or the catastrophically unexpected.

APPENDIX A. - CHARACTERS

Some classic Bulletin characters are provided below to get you started. Printable Character cards are available on this site. Note that some Characters are restricted to certain columns, unless playing with the "Literary" or "Countercannon" themes.

• Admiral Bulletin - PRO
  -Must be in play
  Our hero. Head of the British Office of Special Projects, based out of the old Eppings Bank building on High Street in London, UK.

• Miranda - PRO
  -Must be in play
  Bulletin's second in command. A woman of mysterious past. Crisp, dry and sharp, she is the brains behind the Bulletin. When not on missions, she spends her days pondering and cataloguing the mysteries she's packed away from past adventures in the Eppings vaults. The precise nature of her relationship with Bulletin is an enduring mystery.

• Dr. Posthaste - PRO / NEU
  The Admiral Bulletin of a couple generations previous. He keeps a room at Eppings on High Street and serves as Bulletin's mentor. He has a taste for good mysteries and good scotch, and keeps a remarkably full schedule for an old man enjoying retirement.

• Robespierre - PRO / NEU
  -Requires Magic
  The jovial and unswervable Frenchman, with only a confusing swirl of illusions for a head. Overtaken by the mystical energies within at a young age, he has spent his life searching for the secrets of his peculiar transformation. One of Bulletin's oldest and most loyal comrades.

• Lord Timothy - PRO / NEU
  -Requires Antagonism
  So closely Bulletin's match in duties, rank and age that it's inevitable that they should deeply loathe one another, Lord Timothy never the less will work with Bulletin when the well-being of Britain is at stake. Suggestion of a past with Miranda, who is oddly pleasant with him.

• Merideth "Mimi" Songbird - PRO
  The front desk girl at Eppings on High Street, rarely brought on missions. She is young, anxious to please, and very smart. Mimi spends much of her time assisting Miranda, and regards the older woman with a hero's worship. Lord Timothy was somehow involved in her decision to leave New Zealand, and she becomes brittle at his mention.

• Madame LaChance - PRO / NEU
  -Requires Spiritualism or Magic
  French-Creole spiritualist given to remarkable feats of intuition -- or are they messages from the spirit world? Silky and aloof, but prone to open flirtation with Bulletin -- especially with Miranda in earshot.

• Space Boy - PRO / NEU / VIL
  -Requires Sci-fi
  An astronaut of the Royal Space Force, somehow transported back to Bulletin's day. He is garrulous, gee-whiz and mischievous -- not to mention a bit annoying.

• Tackwater - PRO / NEU / VIL
  -Requires Potboiler
  Headquartered in a forgotten office in the London Police Annex, Tackwater has men in high places, low places and everywhere inbetween. Sharp-featured, angular and greying, the ambiguity of his rank and responsibilities bequeaths him a great deal of power. Apt to call Bulletin in when he smells something above the profitable levels of corruption.

• Jim Gear - PRO / NEU
  Bulletin's miracle mechanic. A young Scotsman prone to shouting, cussing, cracking jokes and loudly complaining. If Gear can't fix it, it's a hippopotamus.

APPENDIX B. - THEMES

The currently available Themes are as follows. A game may include as many or as few as the players wish.

• Americans - Bloody hell, here come the Yanks
• Antagonism - Protagonists can have open animosity toward Bulletin
• Countercannon - Ignore Pro/Neu/Vil limits on all Characters, i.e. Bulletin or Miranda can become Vil, etc.
• Crossover [with ________] - Crossovers with other literary canons
• Literary - Pro/Neu/Vil limits expanded by 1, i.e. Miranda can become Neu, Timothy can become Vil, etc.
• Magic - Spells, sorcery and really magic things
• Mythos - Elder gods and cults of alien machinery
• Potboiler - Radically shrinks the scope of the story and refocuses it on slow-burn urban intrigue, typically in London
• Sci-Fi - Rocket ships and laser pistols
• Spinoff Adventure - Game does not require Bulletin or Miranda
• Spiritualism - A more subdued form of magic, typically offscreen and mysterious
• Steampunk - More subtle than sci-fi, focused mainly on anachronistic technology

APPENDIX C. - EVENTS

Printable Event cards are available on this site.

Act I (Chapters 1-3)

• (1 or 6) CAST: + Pro Neu Vil
  Add a Protagonist, Neutral Character, or Villain to the storyline.
• (2) SWITCH: Pro <-- Neu <-- Vil
  An apparently Neutral Character becomes a Protagonist, or an apparent Villain becomes a Neutral Character.
• (3) BACKSTORY: Pro Flashback
  A Flashback begins, focusing on a Protagonist. This flashback may be exited by any subsequent player at any time.
• (4) MEANWHILE: Pro, Neu, Vil
  The scene cuts to another character in the given Location. In Act I, this can be a Protagonist, a Neutral Character or a Villain. Both storylines may be intercut for the rest of the Chapter.
• (5) MISC: Shift in Weather
  The weather changes.

Act II (Chapters 4-6)

• (1 or 6) CAST: + - Neu Vil
  Add or eliminate a Neutral Character or Villain.
• (2) SWITCH: Pro <--> Neu <--> Vil
  Move a character by one column in either direction.
• (3) BACKSTORY: Neu Flashback
  A Flashback begins, focusing on a Neutral Character. The flashback may be exited by any subsequent player at any time.
• (4) MEANWHILE: Pro, Neu
  The scene cuts to another character in the given Location. In Act II, this can only be a Protagonist or a Neutral Character. Both storylines may be intercut for the rest of the Chapter.
• (5) MISC: Change of Objective
  The team makes a discovery that alters their line of investigation.

Act III (Chapters 7-9)

• (1 or 6) CAST: - Pro Neu Vil
  Eliminate a Protagonist, Neutral Character or Villain.
• (2) SWITCH: Pro <-- Neu --> Vil
  A Neutral Character resolves as either a Protagonist or a Villain.
• (3) BACKSTORY: Vil Monologue
  A Villain begins to give a monologue. The monologue may be exited by any subsequent player at any time.
• (4) MEANWHILE: Pro
  The scene cuts to another character in the given Location. In Act III, this can only be a Protagonist. Both storylines may be intercut for the rest of the Chapter.
• (5) MISC: Act of God or Desperation
  A desperate act by one of our characters, or a sudden catastrophic change.

APPENDIX D. - VERSION CHANGES

This is the first beta release.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License.

The Great Facebook/AIM Plague of '07

I recently accepted an invite to Facebook, which should have been my first warning. I've worked hard on this site and this blog for the pleasure or pain of the internet entier, and I dislike the very concept of internet "walled gardens" requiring exclusive membership.

But join I did.

Facebook has a feature which allows you to issue invites via the AIM network. Last night, while attempting to add my roommate as a "friend" -- something I thought I'd already done in real life some months ago -- it discovered a second real-life friend on my buddy list and asked if I would like to add her as well. I asked it to invite them both. Somehow, that caused invitations to be sent to everyone on my AIM buddy list! Everyone. Including people who were offline. Just. Plain. Everyone. Several-year-old addresses, people I haven't spoken to in years, you name it, there's now a special invitation to Facehuggerbook waiting for them the next time they log in.

And there's no way to stop it.

As my here message now reads in iChat, "FUCK Facebook! Sorry ALL of you."

Admiral Bulletin PDFs

The following are (optional) printable materials for use with the Admiral Bulletin version 0.1 (beta 1) game rules.

Game Sheet
Print 1 copy per game. The Game Sheet tracks the Title, Locations and Themes for a game.

Action Cards (sheet 1)
Print 1 copy and cut out the 8 individual cards. This sheet contains:

• 5 CAST Action cards
• 1 SWITCH Action card
• 1 BACKSTORY Action card
• 1 MEANWHILE Action card
• 1 MISC. Action card
• 1 HOOK Action card

Action Cards (sheet 2)
Print 2 copies and cut out both sets of 8 cards. This sheet contains:

• 2 CAST Action cards
• 2 SWITCH Action cards
• 2 BACKSTORY Action cards
• 2 MEANWHILE Action cards
• 2 MISC. Action cards

Character Cards
Print 1 copy and cut out the 10 cards. This sheet contains sample Character Cards for:

• Admiral Bulletin
• Miranda
• Dr. Posthaste
• Robespierre
• Lord Timothy
• Merideth "Mimi" Songbird
• Madame LaChance
• Space Boy
• Tackwater
• Jim Gear

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License.

Plugins

The following are the plugins in use on the Space Toast Pages, in the order in which they were installed. Note that plugins should be saved into Blosxom's plugins folder with no file extension: do not add .cgi or .txt, for example, or they will not run.

Excludez

Available here. Prevents Blosxom from reading designated directories. Necessary to keep certain text files in the old pages directory from appearing as Space Toast Pages. Minimal setup, no headaches.

Blox

Available here. Automatically inserts paragraph tags and line breaks. Big time saver. Minimal setup. Has an optional "wiki-like" markup system, on by default, which was disabled after it mangled a Creative Commons license. Grinds JavaScript to a bloody pulp. (Would do well to disable itself inside comment tags.)

File

Available here. Allows the contents of text files to be inserted dynamically into templates and stories. Used to add the "Current Addiction" to the sidebar. Minimal setup, no headaches.

MoreEntries

Available here. Creates the "Next" and "Previous" links that appear at the bottom of the page when needed. Smart about when to add the links and when not to. Basic setup minimal, but changing the default wording and styling of the links requires digging through Perl code.

Meta

Available here. Required by the Entries_Cache_Meta plugin below. No setup, pain-free.

Entries_Cache_Meta

Available here. Allows a story to specify its posting date. Needed to backdate the old weekly issue Space Toast Pages and to keep Blosxom from treating edits as brand new postings. Poorly organized variable configuration slows setup.

WritebackPlus

Available here. Invites readers to post their comments about Space Toast Pages. (Hint: Dig through the >Run Fight Heal Magic line.) Complicated setup, but not out of line with total functionality. May need to be rethought if comment spam ever becomes a problem. Update: Was rethought when Comment Spam became a problem.

The problem of Comment Spam will receive its own posting shortly.

Letter to CNN

Dear CNN:
If you want to show your class, next time a Presidential debate ends, don't talk. Don't say anything. Just give us an hour of lovely American music -- Sousa, Copeland, Gershwin -- and allow us to think, discuss, and form an opinion. Is consideration no longer encouraged by the people of CNN? Every person you cut to after the debate walked into your studios with an opinion they wanted to deliver before the American people on prime time tv. That's the candidates' job.

Retired Addiction

As if they're ever really retired:

The "Silent Hill 4: The Room" soundtrack

"Need" in Screenwriting

A device I find useful when facing screenwriter's block is to focus on what each character needs in a scene.

There is a school of screenwriting that would have us believe that all scenes are defined by what the characters want, but I disagree. I've spent many enjoyable moments with friends not particularly needing or wanting anything, and that's what screenwriting basically is -- voyeurism. Overemphasis on need-driven scenemaking destroys spontaneity and overloads the script with tension.

Compare the following problem scene from the first and second draft of "Windy City."

First draft:

EXT. ESTER'S FLAT - NIGHT

PAUL
(surprised)
No, not yet. Not us anyway.

Second draft:

INT. SENATE - HIGH HALLWAY, CONT.

PAUL
We were out watching the airship
with everyone else.

Is the scene better? Who knows, but I'm happier with it. It satisfies my need.

(In case you're interested, I'm of the Jim Cameron school of screenwriting: "Just describe the movie.")

SGV Artillery Game: Proof of Concept

Issue 173, for the week of 7/2/2006.

Toast Note: What with the site redesign (now complete), three concurrent jobs, and a bad summer cold, the Space Toast Page has been a bit neglected lately. Still, I have a treat for you this week. Thanks for waiting.

(If the above opens as plain text, save it to the desktop and drag the file onto your browser.)

This is a proof of concept for a tile-based artillery game using Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and JavaScript. SVG was meant to be an open, plugin-free alternative to Flash, but it was a relative failure. To date, only FireFox and Opera 9 fully support the SVG specifications, with Safari's support still incomplete, and no native support in Internet Explorer. Adobe has released an SVG viewer plugin for most web browsers, but Adobe's implementation is not fully compatible with standard SVG. Still, the Safari development team is making fast progress, and Google is reported to be working on a translator for Internet Explorer, so SVG may yet see a true dawn.

To date, the game has only been tested in FireFox 1.5 for Mac and Safari 2.0.4. It is buggy, but runs in FireFox. Safari will draw the initial game state, but does not loop.

The game runs at a resolution of 700x500 pixels. In a window smaller than that, FireFox creates scrollbars, which trap the arrow keys. I don't know a way around this yet. It should be possible to make the game scale up or down to the size of the window automatically, as SVG is resolution-independent, but that may require redoing the artwork and JavaScript to use percentage measurements, rather than pixel measurements.

The game artwork was created in Inkscape, an open-source project which is making great strides toward creating an alternative to Adobe Illustrator. As of version 0.44, Inkscape is not suitable for directly editing graphics in an interactive SVG file. It has a tendency both to mangle JavaScript and to revert custom group names to generic ones. Additionally, Inkscape's method of saving object attributes like color and stroke width is to bundle them into one long style element (i.e. style="fill:#574736;fill-opacity:1stroke-width:0;stroke-opacity:1") rather than splitting them into individual elements, which are easier to access with JavaScript. The Inkscape team's progress remains impressive.

My biggest concern is speed. The game currently maintains its frame rate by idling for 10 milliseconds between loops, although I think I've come up with a better way to do it -- please refer to the JavaScript's comments. Although I doubt that FireFox's SVG drawing routines are tuned for game speeds, my biggest worry is the speed of JavaScript execution. Some parts of the script store game data in JavaScript variables, others assign it to the game's SVG objects -- as whim desired, really. The latter seems to be considered more "correct," in terms of modern programmers' fetish for object-based programming, but I'm all but convinced it's terminally slower than the former. Accessing elements (manipulating the DOM) is also an absolute pain in the ass in JavaScript. For both reasons, I suggest doing it as little as possible.

As near as I can tell, this is the most advanced SVG game anyone has written to date -- which is sad, but telling. Owing to uneven support, sluggish speed and lack of an integrated development environment, I can't see SVG supplanting Flash any time soon. Still, SVG is not without potential. Enjoy the game.

Further Reading:

With some previous JavaScript experience, it took me about a week of spare time to get this far. The following sources and examples were invaluable.

Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

This seems to be the summer of grand refutation for the "more is better" blockbuster. Spiderman 3, Shrek the Third, and the upcoming Live Free or Die Hard and The Bourne Ultimatum all seem designed to provide more of everything, but less of what we want. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is no exception.

Pirates 3 is a huge, clattering, whirring, blurring, shooting, smashing mashup of everything from the first two. Everything is bigger, everything is more. Every character is back. You've seen boarding scenes, but not like these -- never this huge, never this chaotic. You've seen naval combat, but you've never seen a ship literally chewed apart by cannon fire. It's fun while it lasts, and it lasts a long time, so why does it all boil down to a grand feeling of huh, well, all right then?

Pirates 3 is intensely all right, which alone makes it much more worth our moviegoing dollar than most of the summer blockbusters we've sat through. Most attempts at the kind of guiltless, unapologetic fun of Bruckheimer and Verbinski's Pirates series fail. It turns out that popcorn movies aren't easy. Pirates 3 has an extraordinary level of craftsmanship and amazing stats, but it also has a great deal of control -- the most frequently missed ingredient of such blockbusters. What it does miss are two apparently contradictory elements: focus and chaos.

Picture a movie as a two-dimensional graph, on which anything can be placed; the only rule is the x-axis, which is time. Where the movie deviates toward the bottom of the graph, it moves toward focus. The movie knows what it's doing, why it's doing it, and how it's certain to accomplish it. This is focus, in movie terms. Gosford Park is the most focused film you will ever see. It's also one of the most boring experiences you will ever sit through.

At the top of the graph is chaos; here lies invention, awe, the subconscious. The non-narrative films of Matthew Barney lie entirely at the top of the graph. Even the apparent dips toward structure -- the bike race in Cremaster 4, or the opera in Cremaster 5 -- are just feints. Whatever internal logic or focus the filmmaker may have in mind, it's not presented in the film.

At the bottom of the graph, Pirates 3 suffers, generally on the burdens of being the third of a largely unplanned trilogy. There are so many characters, so many plotlines. Betrayals happen so quickly and frequently from all sides that their resonances seems to cancel each other out, like plucking a guitar string from both ends at random. Who are the most important characters, what do they need to accomplish, and how? The movie jerks all too frequently toward the bottom of the graph, but never takes the time to make a solid, meaningful drive.

At the top of the graph, only one thing needs to be said: The characters take a trip to the afterlife. What makes the afterlife unique? Not very much, really -- same sea and sky, same cinematography. The best we ever get is Captain Jack Sparrow's private purgatory as a salt flat and a series of heat hallucinations. The mythical Far East is a series of generic nighttime sets which blow up predictably. Intangible sexual tension, which obeys its own unknown rules in the movies as it does in real life, is almost entirely absent. The movie wrongly believes that it's in too much of a hurry to ever just stop, take a breath, and look around.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End lies almost entirely in the middle of our imaginary graph, delivering with verve and finesse all of the audience's desires, except for the desire to dream.

Sketchbook Marquee

Concept: Faux ink and watercolor, pastel colors
Software: Inkscape
Download: sketchbook.svg

Blosxom Marquee

Concept: Visual pun logo, unpackable on closer examination
Software: Inkscape
Download: blosxom.svg

Podcast Marquee

Concept: Logo combination in faux 3D
Software: Inkscape
Download: Podcast.svg

Podcast: "The Music of Erich Zann" by H. P. Lovecraft

The Space Toast Pages present a free audiobook of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Music of Erich Zann." In his impoverished days as a student, a young American makes the acquaintance of an old musician whose singular genius draws him ever closer to the mysteries beyond the wall atop the Rue d'Auseil. This short story was originally published March 1922 in The National Amateur, 44, No. 4, pages 38-40. Rasmussen hates his voice, and hopes you will too.

Listen to podcast: TheMusicOfErichZann.mp3
[17 minutes, 52 second - 8.2 MB mp3]


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Public Domain License.

Mid-Coast Preschool Services Development Screening Interview

Child's Name: Matthew Rasmussen Age 4yrs 4 mo. Date Dec 6, 1984

Four Years

Social:
1. How much does your child do for himself in dressing and washing up?
[X] Unbuttons and buttons clothing
[X] Washes hands and face
[X] Toilet trained day and night
[X] Cares for self at toilet mostly

2. How much does your child do for himself in eating?
[X] Spreads with knife soft things

3. Describe how he/she plays with children. gets upset w/ younger children interfering
[X] Understands taking turns/sharing
[X] Group play (2-3 children)

Gross Motor:
1. What does your child do when playing outside? Pretend play - Boats, Little puppy or Sandbox
[ ] Bounces and catches large ball -no
[ ] Pedals tricycle turning corners no - big wheel too large - snow on ground now
[X] Runs and climbs
[X] Hops on one foot

Fine Motor:
1. What does your child do with paper and pencil?
[X] Copies +
[X] Copies []

2. What kinds of toys does your child play with?
[X] Imitates bridge
[ ] Completes 6 piece puzzle
[X] Builds tower of 10 blocks
[X] Cuts with scissors

Mid-Coast Preschool Services
Developmental Screening Interview
Four years
Page 2

Language/Concepts:
1. How much does your child talk? very verbal

2. Can you give me an example of the kind of sentence he/she uses? Noah and Ethan are my very best friends

3. How well is he understood by others? very well
[X] Relates experiences, describes activities
[X] Names 3 Primary colors
[X] Says most sounds except r s th and l
[X] Repeats nursery rhyme or song for others
[X] Understood by strangers

Carolyn Rasmussen
Interviewer

Cloaking Blosxom

The correct form of a URL is where/what, as a web address exists to organize content. By default, Blosxom serves pages from www.spacetoast.net/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi, a machine-centric where/how address which breaks the above guideline. A method was needed to disguise the address of the cgi script.

Blosxom's main site includes instructions for hiding the ...cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi address on an Apache server by means of an .htaccess file -- a local preferences file. Unfortunately, the instructions did not work for this site.

The first method given for cloaking Blosxom (bullet three, step two) redirected requests for any address in the STP directory to Blosxom, including images, media files and old pages. For this site, it would have been written thusly:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^STP/?(.*)$ /cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/$1

The second given method (bullet three) invoked Blosxom only if a real file could not be found. It had problems with directories. Since STP/web/blosxom/ is a real directory, Blosxom did not attempt to create a page there, defaulting to either listing the files in the directory or producing a missing/forbidden error. Here is how it would have appeared:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^STP/?(.*)$ blosxom.cgi/$1 [L,QSA]

Venerable Apache Server's developers are a strange, thundering race who produce suitably impenetrable documentation, but after some levelling up the following was arrived at:

Options +Indexes
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^STP(.*) http://www.spacetoast.net/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi$1

Here is a breakdown. The first line overrides Laughing Squid's default error when trying to browse a directory without an index file. The second turns the URL rewriting engine on. The third tells it when to work -- in this case, when a file can not be found. (Notice that the missing directory line is now gone.) The fourth line tells Apache to remove "STP" and send the remainder of the address to the blosxom.cgi script.

This portion of the Blosxom installation took far more geekery than it should have. Strictly speaking though, it is optional.

Notes on Installing Blosxom

Blosxom's official installation instructions are concise and straightforward. Installation required only a standard FTP client and a text editor. (I used JEdit with the FTP plugin installed.) The blosxom.cgi script ran as soon as it was installed; SpaceToast.net's ISP, Laughing Squid, did not require it to be "blessed" first.

Configuration was straightforward. The settings are stored in the script itself. Many settings can be left at the defaults.

Fitting the Space Toast Pages' existing layout into the Blosxom engine was equally straightforward. An old Space Toast Page was sliced into three "flavor" files, the head.html, story.html and foot.html files, with Blosxom markup tags added where dynamic content should be placed. (An additional date.html flavor file is required. On the Space Toast Pages it is an empty file, as date stamps are part of the story template.)

Blosxom stores posts as plain text files in the "data directory" and serves them as html files or rss feeds from the "blog directory." The Space Toast Pages keep everything in SpaceToast.net/STP. Surprisingly, this doesn't cause a problem. Any of the posts on the Space Toast Pages can be accessed as raw text files by simply substituting .txt for .html in the address bar. The text file is a real file sitting on SpaceToast.net; the html file is a fake created by Blosxom when it's requested. An .htaccess file makes the ephemeral page look real -- more on that in the next post on cgi cloaking.

Why Blosxom?

I'd been meaning to add blog software to my site for some time, and of all the content management systems I looked into, Blosxom seemed to best suite my prejudices:

• Free and open source
• Small and easy on the server
• No annoying .php pages, as discussed in this rant
• No database -- nothing to yell at me if I make changes with FTP
• Plugins to add missing features

With Blosxom now up and running, I can report that it delivers all of the above, at the cost of the following:

• Missing, out of date and incomplete documentation
• Missing, out of date and incomplete plugins

Blosxom is ancient in web terms, buoyed along by its simplicity of design. The original site is no longer updated, and while the current developers have mirrored the site to SourceForge, they appear to have done little to update it. Newer plugins can be found offsite, without documentation or generally even descriptions of what they do. Plugins listed on the conserved original site are often dead links; mirrors of the plugin code can usually be googled, but any documentation not included in the code itself is often gone. Blosxom has only basic functionality without plugins.

It is (apparently) possible for an artist with only a modest technical background to install, configure and use Blosxom. The core blosxom.cgi script is bulletproof, and the original installation instructions are quite good. Setup is minimal, and there are no dependancies. An understanding of Perl is not required.

Plugins can be another matter. Many of the plugin problems fall under a recurrent fallacy of open source: "It's free, so I can be lazy." Certain plugins expect the user to be a Perl hacker, which is counter to the philosophy behind the software. Others omit documentation, or are abandoned with features incomplete. Blosxom's stop-and-go development over the years has not helped the problem. More on the plugins used on the Space Toast Pages will follow, after some notes on basic installation and the problem of "cloaking" the cgi-bin URLs.

Junk Mail Art

Issue 159, for the week of 11/27/2005.

Toast Note: Failing to produce a real Space Toast Page tonight, I got playing with junk mail a little after midnight (it's now close to 3AM). The medium represents an inexhaustible resource, and I've been endeavoring to come up with uses for it lately. The following pieces are assembled out of what junk mail I've accumulated since the blinds project. (More on that later.)

Lem's Bunny, from the web comic of the same name. It's been submitted in a slightly different form to Bunny's Warren, the section for fan-made strips.

The Marboxian. It had to be done.

Finally, Berkley Breathed's Opus, who in my world needs neither introduction nor invitation.

Finding Oz

Issue 141, for the week of 6/6/2004.

Toast Note: "Marboxian" can now be viewed online through Hash Inc's new A:M Films web site. (I'm feeling happy... which is a big deal... for me.) Also managed to fix the too wide problem with the Space Toast Page's JavaScript.

More Human Resources

Issue 149, for the week of 12/5/2004.

Toast Note: Presenting "Human Resources" comic strips 12-25. (Click here for Strips 1-11, in issue 145.) Medium: Blue ballpoint pen (museum issue) and red magic marker (museum issue) on recycled note pad paper (museum issue), improvised straight edges (museum/personal issue). Dedicated to the wage slaves of America, and the founder of the feast, Curious George.

Updated: Click here for Strips 1-11, in issue 145. Click here for Strips 26-41, in issue 158.

Human Resources

Issue 145, for the week of 9/12/2004

Toast Note: Presenting "Human Resources" comic strips 1-11. Medium: Blue ballpoint pen (museum issue) and red magic marker (museum issue) on 4.25"x7" recycled note pad paper (museum issue), improvised straight edges (museum/personal issue), clipboard (museum issue). Dedicated to the wage slaves of America.

Updated: Click here for Strips 12-25, in issue 149. Click here for Strips 26-41, in issue 158.

DVCam High Resolution Photography

Issue 167, for the week of 3/5/2006.

"Copley Square at Night" 1415 x 2559 pixels. 890KB jpeg.

The picture above was stitched together from 108 smaller images using Hugin, a set of open source panorama creation tools. Each slice was captured to tape on a consumer digital camcorder by slowly moving the camera back and forth across the scene from top to bottom at full optical zoom. Once imported and converted to a series of tiffs, the autopano-sift module was run to automatically match neighboring images. Matching points were input by hand in places where the software could not do so. The combined image was exported at full resolution with the edge-smoothing "enblend" module enabled. Cropping and sky completion were performed in Photoshop, and the image shrunk by 50% to eliminate jaggies left over from the camera's original compression.

Still More Human Resources

Issue 158, for the week of 10/23/2005.

Toast Note: Presenting "Human Resources" comic strips 26-41. (Click here for Strips 1-11, in issue 145. Click here for Strips 12-25, in issue 149.) Medium: Blue ballpoint pen (museum issue) and red magic marker (museum issue) on recycled note pad paper (museum issue), improvised straight edges (museum/personal issue). Dedicated once again to the wage slaves of America: "vagrants amidst the plenty."

Space Toast 2006 Paint Catalogue

Issue 174, for the week of 7/9/2006.

A Random English-Sounding Place Name Generator

Issue 166, for the week of 2/26/2006.

Below are fifteen randomly generated English-sounding place names. Reload the page for fifteen more. Enable JavaScript if nothing appears:

Clip Splicing Without QuickTime Pro

Issue 170, for the week of 4/30/2006.

QuickTime Pro wouldn't have pissed me off if they hadn't taken features out of the player to make a paid version. Add some good stuff, charge me extra for it and keep the basics free -- fine -- but cripple the software and charge me extortion money, and I'm not inclined to pay. I've been using Macintosh computers for a long time; I remember when it was exciting that a clip could actually maintain synch! I remember QuickTime 1, QuickTime 2, and the Waterloo that was QuickTime 3. Release three was when Apple gave us some nice codecs and tried to dance around the fact that they'd started charging for cut, copy and paste. It was also when they began nagging us to upgrade to Pro, but that, fortunately, has taken a more subdued tone lately.

Since I never use the second paragraph of a Space Toast Page to actually set up the essay, let's just take a second to mention that it's Apple's botched QuickTime strategy that has gotten us to 2006 with no serious alternative to Flash. Full JavaScript-based interactivity, on-the-fly transitions, realtime filters, and unlimited dynamic tracks in any supported video, still, audio, 3D, panorama or sprite format were and remain possible in QuickTime, but without a real track-based development tool (which should have come standard with every Mac) these features remain hollow bullet points.

Never mind that you can't cut, copy and paste anymore.

So what are our options? Let's say, theoretically, that you're working on an animation for a local science museum. Theoretically, they're going to be running a QuickTime movie to a video projector from within a PowerPoint presentation. Imagine that it's about Ben Franklin, and it's going to be fantastic. This is all theoretical, mind you. Now lets imagine that, because it's going to a video projector, you're working at above DV resolution. You nursed Premier along for far too long, and when Apple did a trade-over promotion with Final Cut DV you jumped at it. Here's the problem: Any editing, even splicing clips together or adding a sound track, will cause Final Cut Express (another creatively crippled program) to first scale down to DV resolution (720x480) and then scale back up when you export -- resulting in a noticeable loss of image quality, especially on the kite strings. (Don't forget how theoretical this all is.) All you really need is the 21st century equivalent of a Steinbeck, but QuickTime paywalled clip splicing in 1998.

The solution is to go back before 1998. QuickTime 2.5 was the final pre-3.0 release and, being freeware, installers can still be found all over the internet. Download a QuickTime 2.5 installer, choose Custom Install, and install only the MoviePlayer application. At the risk of talking out of my ass, at 164k, the MoviePlayer application seems to be little more than a pass-through for features wired into QuickTime, which means that MoviePlayer can now do more than it could when it came out. For instance, it can play .dv clips, or .mov clips compressed with the DV codec, even though digital camcorder support wasn't added to QuickTime until 3.0.

MoviePlayer can't do everything though. H.264 (one of what appear to be three different implementations of MPEG-4 video currently in QuickTime) runs only under Mac OS-X, and opening one of its clips in MoviePlayer will return an error -- thought, impressively, not a crash. "Present Movie" will crash Classic however; don't use it. As a Classic application, MoviePlayer is limited to QuickTime Classic's codecs: Animation, BMP, Cinepak, Component Video, DV NTSC, DV PAL, DVC Pro PAL, Graphics, H.261, H.263, Intel Indeo Video 5, Motion JPEG-A, Motion JPEG-B, MPEG-4 Video, none, Photo - JPEG, Planar RGB, PNG, Sorenson Video, Sorenson Video 3, TGA, TIFF, and Video.

MoviePlayer has the old-fashioned design philosophy of a product without a marketing strategy. It's remarkably intuitive by today's standards. Drag on the timeline with the shift key to select part or all of a clip; a black bar appears to indicate how much you've selected. You can cut, copy, paste, delete, or drag and drop to your heart's content. (Large clips sometimes return low memory errors with cut, copy and paste -- dragging and dropping seems to avoid this problem entirely.) "Extract Tracks...", in the Edit menu, creates a new clip with either the audio or video track. Tracks may be deleted individually, or temporarily turned off and on in the Edit menu as well. Choosing "Get Info" under the Movie menu and selecting "Time" from the "Files" popup menu will allow you to view timecodes.

To get back to that theoretical Ben Franklin animation, pretend that you have spliced together a final cut of the animation and need to replace the scratch track of the live actor's lines with a sound effects track mixed in Audacity or Final Cut Express. Open the sound clip you've exported from either program, select it all and copy it. Go back to the animation clip, choose "Delete Tracks...", delete the current sound track, and click on the first frame of the clip. Hold down option and go up to the Edit menu. The "Paste" menu item has become "Add," which will allow you to paste the sound track under the video. Selecting "Paste" without holding down the option key will perform the default insert operation, moving all the video out of the way and inserting black video for the length of the audio clip. It's weird, but it makes a kind of dumb sense.

We have successfully edited a QuickTime clip, and we have two options with which to save it.

The File menu's familiar "Save As..." includes two choices of its own. "Save normally (allowing dependancies)" will display a much smaller file size than "Make movie self-contained." Chances are the latter is your best bet though. "Make movie self-contained" will copy all of the track data you've added to the clip into one file, rather than looking up all of the individual files you spliced together to make the clip. When you select "Make movie self-contained" a new option will ungrey: "Playable on non-Apple computers." Select this. QuickTime used to default to saving movie data into a "MooV" resource alongside the data fork, rather than into the data fork itself; non-Apple systems never used the split resource/data fork file structure, and see only an empty or corrupt movie file. Use the "Playable on non-Apple computers" option to avoid this problem. The advantage of "Save As..." with "Make movie self-contained" and "Playable on non-Apple computers" is that the resultant movie will be exactly the data that you fed into it. Nothing is recompressed. There is no digital generation loss (and yes, there is such a thing).

What if you need to recompress the movie though? Suppose you need a 320x240 version compressed for the web. What if the computer playing the animation has too slow a hard drive to keep up with the Photo-JPEG codec at maximum quality? Beneath "Save As..." is an "Export..." option. This brings up the standard QuickTime export dialogue, from which you can export to non-QuickTime formats, as well as change the frame size, frame rate, sound and video codecs, and streaming optimizations.

As usual, I've gone on for far too long with a very simple idea, and one week's Space Toast Page has become another's. If you can run Classic, get MoviePlayer. It's a pawn shop Swiss army knife with a rusty corkscrew and the initials P.B.R. carved into the handle, but it still basically works. If you want a Big Message, which I'm sure you don't, onward is not always upward, and Neil Young can kick it out better in nine days than John Melencamp could in his entire wasted career. Thank you for reading.

Build Notes: Junk Mail Blinds

Issue 160, for the week of 12/4/2005.

Boring Preface: There's this idea of "junk chic" floating around that I'm vaguely attracted to. Most of it, however, seems to be concerned with buying old crap at antiques stores and putting a new coat of paint on it. What I'm interested in is more finding uses for the reasonably well-made things we're expected to throw away. Somehow I'm not sure if making things yourself will ever come back into the mainstream; there's just too much money to be made selling us everything. Maybe that's the point. Free software, free instructions, free knowledge... There's a growing, silent acknowledgment that there needs to be a non-commercial sphere to life, distinct from religion and opposition, and this nebulous idea of "family" our politicians keep pounding us with. Not everything is about money. The irony is that the people who sent me the raw material for this project did so in the hope of making money from me. And they can screw.

Theory: By affixing strips of junk mail to an existing set of venetian blinds, one can drastically reduce the amount of light allowed through without losing the ability to raise and lower the blinds.

Get: In my case, about three months' worth of junk mail, but your mileage will vary. Your trusty roll of duct tape (color to suit). Two rolls of scotch tape. A ruler. A spool of uninsulated wire. A pair of needle-nosed pliers. A thumbtack. Space to work.

Step i: Measure the width of your window. The real width. Don't leave a full inch on either side like those goddamn blinds we're covering over. Leave maybe a couple of millimeters. (Dark! We must have dark!)

Step ii: Tape off on your workspace a piece of real estate (in my case, floor) measuring the same width as your window and six inches tall. (Or three floorboards, if they're each two inches tall.) This will serve as a template for building the sections.

Step iii: Next we'll need to figure out where to affix the hangers that will connect the junk mail blinds to the existing ones. We will eventually be bending wire into a set of three connector pieces, one for each of the three strings running down through the original blinds. For now, grab your ruler and measure the distance between the edge of the window and the nearest of these strings. On your template, go in the measured distance from either side and make tape marks. Also, find the center of the template and mark it with tape as well. I think we're ready to start building a section.

Step 1: Find a nice piece of junk mail (you'll start talking like this) -- maybe a credit card letter with your name misspelled, or a useless "newsletter" from your predatory health insurance company. Lane Bryant sure likes sending me fliers now that they've decided I'm female. Whatever you have handy.

Step 2: Fold the piece of junk mail upward at the bottom (I recommend using an existing fold) and align it with the bottom left corner of your workspace.

Step 3: Tape the folded portion down with scotch tape.

Step 4: Fold the top of your sheet of junk mail down so that it fits within your six-inch template. Chances are it doesn't have another crease already made at the six inch mark, so use your ruler to make the fold yourself.

Step 5: Tape that bad boy down.

Step 6: Grab another piece of junk mail. Place it under the previous piece so that they're overlapping by an inch or two.

Step 7: Fold the bottom up so that it's sort of "eating" the previous piece.

Step 8: Tape the folded part to the old piece and to itself. Be sure that the corners are taped thoroughly.

Annoying Tip: Kinda thin? Not sure it's going to block enough light? I'm sure you've got a lot of little pieces of junk mail floating around. Why not tape one of them inside the fold before taping it down? Envelopes work great for this -- they're two-ply. You can even stick smaller annoying things like fake credit cards inside the envelopes before taping them down.

Step 9: Grab your ruler again and fold the top down.

Step 10: Tape that muthah down, and to the previous piece.

Step 11: Repeat steps 6 through 10 until the section fills your template. You now have a strip of junk mail six inches tall, and as wide as your window.

Step 12: Enjoy a good pull of Endurance Ale. You've earned it! (It's called Endurance for a reason, but it grows on you.)

Step 13: Flip the section over. You'll notice that all the taping has been done on the reverse, keeping it out of sight. Just because we're making things out of junk mail doesn't mean we can't pay attention to aesthetics.

Step 14: Grab your duct tape. We'll be using the duct tape to add strength where the new blinds connect to the old ones. It'll also impose some kind of order on the appearance of the blinds, which is probably just as well.

Step 15: Rip off a strip between half again and twice the height of the section. That'll be about ten inches, if you want to measure it.

Step 16: Use the marks you made in step iii to stick the tape down where it will be needed to match up with the string.

Step 17: Flip the section back over.

Step 18: Fold the ends of the strip of duct tape over and stick them down. Remember, we don't care too much what this side looks like.

Step 19: Repeat steps 13 through 18, placing a strip of duct tape for each of the three marks we made in step iii.

Step 20: Grab your thumbtack. On each of the strips of duct tape, make two holes about a quarter of an inch apart and one inch from the top of the section. I recommend cutting out a template, to save you from having to measure the position of the holes every time. Make sure the holes go all the way through, and are wide enough to get a piece of wire through. Don't stab yourself.

Step 21: Grab your spool of wire. Straighten a bit of it out to work with.

Step 22: Using your ruler and pliers, snip off three pieces of wire each measuring four inches long.

Step 23: Center a piece of wire in your pliers.

Step 24: Fold it in half, into a long horseshoe shape.

Step 25: Fold the wire at a right angle, half an inch from the pronged end.

Step 26: Repeat steps 23 through 25 for the other two pieces of wire.

Step 27: Twist your venetian blinds shut so that the slats are angled down toward you.

Step 28: Insert the first of the bent pieces of wire around the first string on the inside of your blinds. We want it to hang so that the prongs are facing inward.

Step 29: Repeat step 28 for the other two pieces of wire.

Step 30: Bring the blind section over to your window and find the first set of holes in the top of the duct tape.

Step 31: Place the first prong through the first hole.

Step 32: Place the second prong through the second hole.

Step 33: Reach around behind the section and bend the prongs up, flush with the back of it.

Step 34: Repeat steps 31 through 33 for the other two pieces of wire. The new junk mail blind section is officially hung.

Step 35: Tear off three small squares of duct tape.

Step 36: Stick each over one of the exposed sets of prongs on the back. This is to keep the ends of the wire from catching on anything. Squeeze tight.

Step 37: Repeat all numbered steps until the blinds are complete.

Criticisms: I've noticed two things, since completing the blinds, which deserve attention. First, the mechanism in the blinds, not being designed to hold this much weight, has begun to squeak a bit. A dab of electric shaver oil or graphite would probably take care of the problem, but I haven't bothered to try yet. The second concern is a tendency I've noticed for the lowermost sections to catch momentarily while nearing the bottom. Why this should be an issue near the bottom but not the top I still don't know. I've found that the problem can be reduced by bending the wire hangers outward on the bottom-most sections, so that the blind section sits farther out from the original slats.

Final Thoughts: It took me about twenty minutes to do a section, once I got all of the experimenting out of the way. I did one or two sections a night, which made for some relaxing non-computer work before bed. (It was kinda nice.) I'm still not totally satisfied with the hanging scheme (bent wire) but I haven't come up with anything better or easier. All things considered, I'm pretty happy.

Myst V and the Way Forward

Issue 165, for the week of 2/19/2006.

Literally three steps in, I'm defeated by a low gate. I'm looking down at it. I could step over it. Still I'm trapped.

I have chosen to begin this essay with a digression.

You know those programs that change the screen resolution when they go to full-screen, and then tell the other applications that they've done it? It's a kind of a slapdash Mac port thing. You quit, and every window on the screen has been squished down to an absurdly wee size and moved to the top left corner of the screen. Myst V is like that.

Ultimately, that's not the point of this essay, though.

As with Myst [I], the exploded box of which hangs on my wall for inspiration and which I can still play under Classic, the default navigation system of Myst V becomes bothersome after a few minutes. You're rarely quite looking where you want to be, and yet with the Obsidian/Burn:Cycle-style smoothly eased tracking shots between nodes replacing Myst's hard cuts and simple transitions, you often find yourself looking at the interesting object during movement, only to have your camera jerked away from it as the move completes. Nodes that would appear to give access to nearby areas are often a few feet from the ones that actually do. Myst V, of course, adds two additional movement styles, a free movement mode that doesn't appear to support game pads, and a "Classic Plus" which slaves the view rotation to the mouse cursor -- something not to be attempted without a truly boss frame rate and/or a love of vertigo.

Still, we haven't reached our ultimate point.

The engine underlying Myst V is unique to the in-storyline Myst franchise. Instead of prerendered stills (Myst, Riven) or prerendered VR panoramas (Myst III, Myst IV), the game is rendered in realtime 3D. The appeal of this method for the developers is obvious. Rather than setting up shots, rendering, tweaking, rerendering, overlaying animations, and then having to move to a wholly separate software system to construct the game play, development goes straight from modeling to game engine in one step, assisted by a glut of available off the shelf software. Besides that, it just feels more modern -- an unremarked upon motivation among middle-aged tech developers like the Miller brothers.

The trouble is, it's not better. Compare the following screen shots:

Even with the best video card, which you don't have, and all the light baking and optimization tricks in the book, the graphical quality of a frame rendered in one 30th of a second is never going to achieve the richness of a frame rendered over half an hour. The underlying models and textures must be smaller. The lighting system must be simpler. Even with a compressed color palette and knife-sharp shadows (not entirely undesirable for direct sunlight), not to mention eight years between them, the Riven screenshot is more realistic than that of Myst V. The objects are more complex and more numerous, the textures are high enough quality to be invisible, and everything that should cast a shadow does.

Of course, the quality of a still image isn't the end of realism, which is where we uncover one of the most compelling reasons for the move to realtime 3D: Myst V moves. Look at the water in the game's reversed wood between the worlds starting point, and even on low texture quality you'll see ripples. Moving ripples. No more strange, frozen glass oceans. Stand still when you arrive on the beach. The clouds move slowly through the sky. The waves roll in and fall away. Birds flit through the sky (though most seem to be part of the static landscape). The sense of immersion is heightened, until, of course, you start wishing your video card could smooth those jaggies without the frame rate tanking, you notice that the smoothness of objects' faces becomes angular at their edges, and you're just plain stopped while floating along like Professor Xavier by a tumble of small, ordinarily fun to climb rocks.

It's still not our point, but it's worth mentioning that it's best to make an insurmountable obstacle insurmountable. Personally, I can also climb a ladder with one hand, wade, and swim -- not that it matters.

We do in fact have a point, and we're getting dangerously close to it.

Myst V, while perhaps as good a puzzle game as its predecessors, has abandoned its roots. This, in itself, would not be a bad thing if the result were actually worth the change.

Let's review what Myst V has gained:

• Unlimited panning. Can also be achieved in prerendered graphics using VR panoramas, as with Obsidian, Myst III, Myst IV.
• Animated tracking shots between nodes. Unnecessary. Our brains understand a "cut" -- it's that blink we do every time we look from one object to another. The novelty wears off quickly, as game play is slowed by it.
• Free movement. Draws attention to the character's limitations. Movement is still on a rail, we're simply allowed to deviate slightly from it. Not essential to this genre.
• Dynamic lighting effects. Underutilized. Aside from the hard shadows cast by moving objects, most of Myst V's lighting appears to be painted on.
• Hardware acceleration. Modern video cards can do a lot.

Now let's review what Myst V has lost:

• Prerendered graphics. Visually superior to realtime 3D graphics in richness and complexity.
• Video. Those motion-captured 3D people with actors' faces look pretty creepy, and the cloth keeps intersecting the legs.

Myst V is the last Myst game, but it need not be the death knell of the genre. There is room to move forward with the graphical adventure, while learning from the mistakes of Myst V. Realtime 3D graphics simply aren't good enough. Is there a better way? I would suggest that there is.

First, though, review this QuickTime VR panorama of a node in Myst V. The panning doesn't quite feel right. I suspect that there are two reasons for this, one trivial and the other quite complex.

Regarding the simpler problem, real life lenses are rarely perfectly round. They tend to flatten in the middle, creating lower distortion near the center of the image and higher distortion toward the edges. We've come to expect this. VR panoramas, which typically distort and display a portion of a single 360 degree image, are, I suspect, correcting for an idealized lens. Distortion is lowest at the center and increases toward the edges at a rate that is mathematically "right," but less complex than that of a typical lens. If I'm right, this should be easy enough to overcome by tweaking the lens correction algorithms.

The second problem is more complex, and it has to do with the way cameras are actually manipulated. Photographing panoramas requires the purchase or construction of a custom camera mount which places the lens directly in the center of rotation. This is unusual. Usually, the camera is mounted at its base, placing the lens above and in front of its center of rotation. Panning thus introduces a small movement to the camera's view position in addition to its orientation. Your eyes are likewise mounted above and in front of their center of rotation. The effect is most noticeable when objects are close-up. Close one eye and hold a pen up in front of you. Turn your head left and right. You can see different things behind the pen based on where your head is turned. You expect to. It's part of your sense of depth, and it's something that VR panoramas completely fail to reproduce.

Here we have arrived at our point.

I propose that a slightly novel game engine can overcome the limitations of both VR panoramas and realtime 3D in the graphical adventure genre. We can regain the detail of prerendered scenery and filmed actors without sacrificing the ability to animate portions or all of a given scene. If we accept the primacy of the node to the genre, discarding arguably unnecessary tracking shot transitions and "free" movement modes, we can consider a new style of node construction I unceremoniously dub the Dented Ball.

The Dented Ball is a real ball, or rather a very close approximation made up of several hundred triangles. Inside it lies a virtual camera, slightly above and forward of center. On the inside of the ball is mapped a high resolution image of a prerendered scene. Looking outward, the virtual camera records a portion of the scene, corrects for lens effects, and sends the resultant view to the player. This ball is our basic game node.

The scenery images, not to mention the tiny amount of data needed to construct this particular ball's geometry, are loaded from the game DVD while the player is at a nearby node. Priority is given to the nodes directly connected to the previously occupied node, with priority further given to those portions of the landscape that the player would see first upon stepping into a given node from the previous. Nodes far behind are discarded, and reloaded only when the player nears them again. The goal is to minimize or eliminate waiting time between nodes.

Animation such as waves, birds, and even people may be added to the scene by mapping movie clips, rather than still images, to a portion or all of the inside of the Dented Ball. Modern video compression algorithms nearly half the amount of data that must be pulled off the game DVD to equal the image quality of a standard movie DVD, and modern computer DVD drives are capable of reading data much faster than is necessary to play movies compressed the old fashioned way. By feeding movie clips into the priority system above, waiting time between nodes can still be kept to a minimum. In addition, a standardized set of tools for fading, overlaying and cutting between still images should be integrated to allow for such simple effects as lightning flashes and the slow dimming of the sun as it goes behind a cloud, without requiring a large and unwieldy video clip.

In an ideal scene, there are no objects near the camera. (This is of course unlikely.) The edges of the ball on which the scene is painted are too far away from the viewer for the slight position offset of the camera to be noticeable. This would be a scene of the player floating high in the air -- on the whole not very useful.

Nearby objects are the reason we call this the Dented Ball. Imagine that the player is standing near the corner of a wall. Panning right, more of the right side of the wall becomes visible, panning left, the opposite. In order to simulate this effect, the ball itself has been dented inward, toward the camera, so that its edge matches up with the wall's corner in the prerendered scene. From the outside, the ball would appear to have a large dent in it, hence our name for it. Because the camera offset is most noticeable when objects are close, gradually falling off to imperceptibility as objects move farther away, the actual dent of a perfectly right-angled wall in the ball would not have straight edges, but would in fact taper out at an increasingly gentle angle before plunging smoothly back into the outside surface of the ball.

Despite our name though, dents aren't the only method we'll need to produce proper foreground/background separation while panning. (We should just go ahead and call this separation "parallax effects.") Reference the pen with one eye closed again. It, like a blade of grass, glasses on a nearby table, and any number of other real world objects exhibit a complete separation from their background. In such cases we'll need to slice the ball into concentric layers, like an onion, and map a series of cutout portions of the scene onto each. There will be times when we'll need to combine slices with dents. Depth maps, grayscale images representing simply how far any point in a given image is from the camera, can be rendered from any 3D animation package, and can be used to assist an automated workflow for making these dent and layering decisions.

The Dented Ball allows us to create a richer visual experience, both static and in motion, than any previously conceived graphic adventure engine. By repurposing modern video cards to draw concentric near-3D nodes, we find a new way to leverage the technologies users and game developers already possess. We unify the rich legacy of graphic adventure games like Myst V while discarding our detrimental modern preoccupations. In doing so, we glimpse a third path though the complexities of contemporary game design and begin once again simply to explore.

Build Notes: Tape Case Bike Light

Issue 177, for the week of 8/27/2006.

Toast Note: Happy birthday to my sister Becky, who is celebrating in India. Wow. That is way cooler than a Cuisinart.

Boring Preface: Massachusetts state law requires a bike to have a forward light while riding at night. Commuting home on the city's lit streets, I'm less worried about seeing the road than about other people seeing me. The cheapest bike lights seem to run about $20, so I'll make that the maximum budget for this project. The light needs to be easy to attach and remove, durable enough to throw into a shoulder bag, and easy to turn on and off. I'd also like it to double as a flashlight the next time a transformer blows up in Central Square.

Theory: The front reflector seems to be the most logical place to attach the light to the bike, though I don't want to obscure the reflector itself. It should be possible to build a bike light inside an old audiocassette case using two AA batteries, a pack of magnets, and a bright white LED upgrade for a mini Maglite. The light would clip around the bike's front reflector. This project should cost less than $20.

Get:

• An audio tape case
• A three-LED upgrade kit for a mini Maglite
• Eight (8) round 3/4" ceramic magnets
• Two (2) AA batteries
• Some thin insulated wire
• A few scraps of aluminum foil
• Electrical tape
• A small tube of super glue
• A pair of needle-nosed pliers
• A utility knife
• A ruler or measuring tape
• Space to work

Make sure that the cassette case isn't one of the newer "slim" cases, but the regular kind. The mini Maglite upgrade kits consist of a replacement reflector housing three bright white LEDs wired into a resistor correctly sized for two AA batteries. They retail for about $11. You could certainly use your own LEDs (I read that Christmas lights are a cheap way to get them) but I don't know nearly enough of a damn about electricity to figure out what size resistor to use -- just that I need one to keep from blowing the LEDs out. Three-quarter inch ceramic (black) magnets usually come in packs of eight at the hardware or hobby store, and go for about $1.25. They're fun to play with. If you don't have a little spool of insulated wire lying around the house, I guarantee you have a broken stereo in the basement you can pillage. Utility knives seem to have been renamed "box cutters" since I was a kid, but I refuse to let the terrorists win.

Step A: Measure the width of your front reflector. These instructions are written for a reflector about 2 and 1/8 inches wide. From what I can tell from a cursory look around Porter Square, this kind is fairly common. Some of the newer bikes have smaller reflectors (why?), which should work fine for our project. A larger reflector would require a larger case -- maybe a VHS-C tape case. Everything jams in pretty snugly with this design as is, so if your reflector is a different size you'll have to play jazz a bit.

Step 1: Take the tape and label out of your audiocassette case and throw them away. Your crappy Sony deck hasn't worked for most of a decade now anyway.

Step 2: Cut/snap the two prongs out of the tape case.

Step 3: Measure the width of the bracket on the back of your reflector -- the part that connects it to the bike. Mine is 3/4 of an inch wide. The metal piece will probably be a little bit narrower than the part it screws into. If it is, just take the wider of the two measurements. Like I said, mine seems to be a pretty standard part, so if your reflector is the same size as mine it's also probably 3/4 of an inch wide at the bracket too.

Step 4: Cut a notch, using that measurement, in the back of the tape case. The reflector and bracket together are too thick for the case to snap shut around, so we'll need the bracket to hang out the back. Be careful to center your cut. Cut from the bottom of the case up to about even with the overhang. Mark your cut lightly with a straight edge or ruler, then go over it repeatedly until you cut all the way through. A little bit of splintering around the cut is normal, just don't be so impatient that you crack the case. Did I mention it might be a good idea to put a new blade in your knife for this project? It might be a good idea to put a new blade in your knife for this project. Before now.

Step 5: Wrap electrical tape around all three sides of the cut. This will cover up the shattery bits, keep any cracks from spreading, and give it a nice rubberized mounting around the bike reflector bracket. Cut away the excess.

Step 6: Grab two of the ceramic magnets. We're going to be gluing them on either side of the cut, about even with the overhang. These will be to rest against the back of the reflector, hopefully keeping it from moving too much. One by one -- and with the other magnets clear -- put a good bead of super glue on one of the two magnets, press it into place and hold it there for about a minute.

Step 7: Stick a piece of electrical tape along the entire length of the bottom of the case, folded over lengthwise. Half of it should be stuck to the outside of the case, and half to the inside, with the tape stuck to itself where it crosses the notch we cut. This will keep the bottom from wobbling by holding it tightly against the metal bracket. The electrical tape is a little bit stretchy, which is good. Anyone going for extra credit here might try sticking a rubber elastic inside the tape for extra holding power.

Step 8: Open the LED upgrade kit. You'll find a little black cup with the LEDs inside and two wires sticking straight out the back, surrounded by a silver reflector.

Step 9: Remove the reflector; the LEDs are bright and directional enough without it, and it's too thick to fit inside our tape case.

Step 10: Bend the two wires on the back to either side, being careful not to rush and snap them. I don't really know how much abuse they'll take, and I don't want to find out.

Step 11: Cut four pieces of wire: three long ones (maybe 4-5 inches apiece?) and one short one (1-2 inches long).

Step 12: Strip each of the wires half an inch in from both ends. If you've never stripped wires with pliers before, it's easy: Go around the wire worrying the plastic insulation with your pliers' cutters. Don't squeeze hard enough to actually cut the wire. The plastic cuts more easily than the metal inside. Begin pulling the wire as you continue weakening the insulation. Look for strong places, and keep pulling the wire and worrying at the insulation. Eventually, the plastic will begin to slide off the wire. Yank it off, and give the wire a twist or two.

Step 13: Take two of your longer pieces of wire. Make a little loop in the stripped portion on one side. Slide this loop around one of the wires on the back of the LED cup. Twist it a few more times, and squish it all together to get a good electrical connection. Repeat, looping the second wire to the cup's other connection. If you want now, you can solder the wires permanently together -- but I hate soldering, and I don't want to pretend this project requires it. Either way, finish by sticking a square of electrical tape on the back of the cup.

Step 14: Slide the LED cup up under the lip of the cassette case, facing outward. Feel free to glue it in place, but it's a pretty tight fit -- I say don't bother.

Step 15: Since LEDs only allow current to flow through them in one direction, we'll need to figure out which side is + and which is -. Hold the wires against either end of one of the AA batteries. If it lights up (cool!) make a note of which side is which. If not, reverse and retry. (If nothing lights up, redo those connections.)

Step 16: Tear off two pieces of electrical tape, each about twice the length of a battery. Lay each strip of tape face up on the table and center the batteries on them. We're going to be taping the wires directly to the batteries. It's easy to do, and with the LEDs we won't have to change the batteries much anyway.

Step 17: Tear off two small scraps of aluminum foil. Stick the wire from one end of the LED cup to the electrical tape beneath the battery contact, and then put a scrap of foil on top of it. Wrap the tape around the battery contact. Repeat for the other wire and the other battery. Wrap the tape around the battery contact. The aluminum foil is here to give us a larger electrical contact. Aluminum foil is conductive.

Step 18: Tear off two more scraps of aluminum foil. Using the same procedure as the last step, stick the short wire to the other end of one of the batteries. Grab a ceramic magnet and the other scrap of aluminum foil. Tape the loose end of the short wire to the top of the magnet, with part of the foil sticking out. Fold the foil over the top of the magnet.

Step 19: Tear off a larger scrap of aluminum foil and wrap it completely around one of the remaining magnets. This will be our "switch."

Step 20: As in step 18, tape the remaining long wire to another of the magnets, with a piece of foil folded over to make an electrical contact. Let it stick itself to the "switch" magnet.

Step 21: Just like in step 17, connect the loose end of the wire to the remaining battery contact. The LED should light up. If it doesn't, troubleshoot: We should have a circuit going from the LEDs to the first battery, through the bottom magnet, through the foil on the "switch," through the second battery, back into the LEDs. Make sure your +'s and -'s are all going in the right direction. Redo the foil/wire connections with more foil. If it did work, great job.

Step 22: Notice something. When you pull the "switch" magnet out of the stack and replace it with a bare magnet, the LEDs don't light up. Ceramic magnets aren't conductive. When the "switch" is in place, the circuit is on. When there's a bare magnet there instead, it's off. Leave the bare magnet in the stack between the two wired magnets. Stack the "switch" and the two remaining magnets with the "switch" in between. We should have two stacks of three magnets, which you'll notice are about the same depth as the tape case.

Step 23: Push the two batteries tightly into the top right and left hand corners of the tape case so that they're square with the edge.

Step 24: Place the stacks of magnets at the lower inside corners of the batteries. Experiment with closing the tape case. Find the position where the stacks are as close to the lower right and left hand corners of the case as possible, but the case can still close without hitting the magnet stacks or the batteries. We want everything to fit snugly.

Step 25: Once you've found the ideal positions, put a generous bead of super glue on top of each magnet stack and close the case. Hold the case shut as tightly as possible for about a minute, to make sure the super glue sets up properly with the top of the case.

Step 26: Flip the case over and repeat step 25, gluing the bottom of the magnet stacks to the bottom of the case.

Step 27: Once you've given the super glue some time to set up, flip the case back over and reopen it. Since we had to cut that notch in the back of the case, the back is the weak point: pull evenly on both sides to reopen.

Step 28: The trouble with ceramic magnets is that they don't like sticking to anything more than they like sticking to themselves. To add strength, encircle each of the glued magnets with another bead of super glue. Let it set up, and cut away the excess if it gets on anything else.

Step 29: Tape the loose wires out of the way. You're done. Swap the "switch" with the other loose magnet (storing the loose magnet on the other stack) place it around your bike reflector and let it snap shut. You've got a light on your bike -- a bright one at that, which doesn't strobe, pops on and off easily, and won't chew through batteries every couple weeks.

Criticisms: Despite being built in a plastic case, the light is far from waterproof. I wouldn't even call it terribly splashproof. Silly as it would look, a sandwich bag over the top might not be the worst idea on a rainy day. Opening the light takes some learning, as you figure out how to evenly pull on both sides of the case's back. The biggest problem I've encountered, though, is the one mentioned in step 28: ceramic magnets just don't like to glue down. Step 28 was an afterthought, after I had to reglue one of the stacks. It's certainly stronger with an additional bead running around the base of the magnets, but I'm starting to think a gel epoxy (nasty as that stuff is) might eventually be needed.

Final Thoughts: It works, weirdly enough. Assuming you already have things like pliers, electrical tape and a set of batteries, you should have no trouble beating the $20 budget. (If not, they're good things to own.) Please enjoy your antiluxury good. Build one? Send me a picture.

If you liked this project, you may also dig the previous Build Notes: Junk Mail Blinds.

[Click here for a printable version -- or just turn stylesheets off.]

Letter to the Editor

Issue 147, for the week of 10/24/2004

From the Boston Metro Weekend Edition, Oct. 22-24, 2004, page 29:

"NEW PAD ON NEWBURY"

WHEN CHRISTINA Capone moved from her digs in New York she had a bit of anxiety about abandoning the hustle and bustle of "the city." She was ready to head back to her hometown of Boston, but didn't want to trade off on her urban lifestyle. "I was nervous when I looked at places in Beacon Hill because there was nobody on the streets," said Capone, 26, who works in the media department at Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos Inc. The solution -- a modern, two-bedroom, door-man building on Newbury Street. Needless to say, she hasn't missed a beat. "The constant motion is so important to me," said Capone, while gazing down from her third-floor apartment at the consistent flow of shoppers passing Niketown and the oh-so-cosmopolitan diners heading into Armani Cafe. The floor-to-ceiling windows in her spacious abode help to absorb the energy of the city's most fashionable street. The glass coffee table, khaki-colored couch peppered with primary-colored pillows and modern art on the walls pulsate urban sophistication. "The inside reflects the outside and the energy of the city," she said. Although a posh place on Newbury can be a bit of a drain on your wallet, the convenience makes up for all the cash you'd be dumping into a car, said Capone. "My mentality is that there is no reason to drive. Everything should be in walking distance," said Capone. Whether it's a fresh salad from Scuzzi a block away, or a pasta dish from Piattini Wine Cafe across the street, everything is right at your fingertips. And, although Capone admits she does have a weakness for the trendiest purses at Luna, which she stores nicely in her walk-in closet, the rest of the swanky shops don't tempt her. "I'm lucky that I don't have a shopping problem," said Capone.

FACTS: Name: Christina Capone - Age: 26 - Occupation: Media relations at Hill, Holiday, Connors, Cosmopulos Inc. - Rent/Own: Rent - Size: Two-bedroom - Where: Newbury Street

- CHRISTINA WALLACE

Sent to the Boston Metro October 24, 2004:

Thank you for this weekend's Home section profile of Christina Capone's "New Pad on Newbury." Might I, however, submit a somewhat different profile?

After five months of post-college job seeking, animator Matthew Rasmussen, 24, settled into an hourly-wage position selling tickets at a local museum. He now rents (not owns) a room in a four bedroom Inman Square apartment, which features a living room, a porch with peeling paint, and a mostly-functional kitchen. Rasmussen's bedroom is tastefully appointed with a desk of his own construction, an oak futon, and a prefab bookshelf. A geranium by the window, perched jauntily atop a milkcrate, quietly pulsates urban sophistication when it needs to be watered.

Reader Lindsay LeClair adds:

Lindsay B. LeClair lives in an apartment with floors so uneven that even the
shelves are falling over, but it's otherwise cozy and sunny, with a kitchen to
beat the band. She is cohabiting with her boyfriend of nearly five years,
which is terribly convenient -- she would not be able to afford living in
Boston if she didn't share a bedroom. It's too bad, really, that this
convenient apartment is nowhere near a grocery store. The young couple was
really counting on Lindsay's beater car to make up for that. All jokes aside,
the apartment is beautiful, convenient to the T barring, if convenience
includes strolling through an industrial, lifeless bioengineering square where
you're pretty sure they're actually TRYING to make the undead... or at least
that's what it smells like. In spite of all that, Lindsay is very happy in
their new apartment.

Iraqi War Deaths

Issue 178, for the week of 10/15/2006.

Please click the above link to view the image at full size.

This image is released without copyright:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Public Domain License.

STP Relaunched

The Space Toast Page has become the Space Toast Pages, a "journal of journals" on Rasmussen's various obsessions and experiments. The weekly issue format has been discarded in favor of a categorized, feed-friendly, commentable series of blogs and sub-blogs running on the free and open source Blosxom content management system. Thank you as always for reading, and welcome back!

Older Archive

For older Space Toast Pages (weekly "Issues"), please go to www.spacetoast.net/STP/previousindex.html. I'm working on bringing these into the new STP system, starting with the most popular and my personal favorites, and eventually running back to issue 112, but it may take some time.

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