Thursday, 6th April, 2006

A Small Series Of Inconsequential Events (2)

story memory destiny design

Or "How I ended up being a Graphic Designer by accident".

(Continuing on from this and potentially introducing an element of non-chronologicalness into the series)

Towards the end of 1992, I'd ditched the idea of becoming a Primary School Teacher (yeah, can you imagine?!), dropped out of Charlotte Mason College, and started a part-time Philosophy Degree — with no real idea about what my future was going to be like.

I had, potentially, a notion that I'd spend the rest of my life sitting in a bar with a glass of wine, espousing Interesting Thoughts™ on passers by.

(Um, actually... )

But all that's rather irrelevant really, except to explain what I was doing sat in Pendle JCR on the first day of the new academic year, rather than lying on my back in the Lake District.

Being the start of the new year and all that, there were fresh new copies of the Students' Union newspaper lying around — fresh in the sense that there was a new editor.

Ever-the-curious person, I picked up a copy and started leafing through it...

Now, if yous know me at all, you'll know that the majority of the time, what matters to me is how something looks, rather than what it says. I am (hands up in the air) a shallow individual after all.

"This is SHITE", I declared, to anyone within earshot. "The layout is pants and the photographs are appalling!"

And they were, to be honest. They were dithered rather than halftoned. Now, I wasn't exactly full of the Repro-fu that I am these days — my only publishing experience was knocking out an essay in PageMaker back in 1987 — but I knew that the quality of the photographs couldn't be the best that whoever was publishing this rag could achieve.

The thing is though, "within earshot" — or, more specifically, sat right next to me — was the new Editor's best friend.

"Well, if you think you could better, go see the Editor" she said. "I think she's looking for an Assistant Editor still."

And so (rather uncharacteristically of me), I did.

...

Bugger I was going to post a picture of me from the time — a hilariously unkempt picture of me in 1992 staring at PhotoShop 2.1 running on a IIcx (which is now in my loft) — but the only place it exist(ed) was on a website that I built in 1996.

The other day, I was trying to show it to April (in one of those "I was online before you " kind of conversations) but even though I could see it, she couldn't.

(Host not found)

Now I can't find it.

Damm you Internets. Where's my stuff?

Search (Bodge)

tranniefesto search

People often moan at me that I don't have some kind of 'search' thingy. So I knocked up a quick-n-dirty one with grep...

I'll tidy that up later...

And now that I made it case-insensitive, there's even more

Aw Crap

photo

I'm really rather annoyed with myself today. All week, the sun has been shining, and even though it's been bloody cold, I've had the perfect opportunity to sort a few things out, and prepare for a weekend away.

(I need a break)

But all the time, I've been procrastinating — spending the hours writing little bits of code¹ and gazing wistfully (?) out of the window at the clear skies.

I theorised, you see, that I'd be more inclined to Get Things Done™ when it was a bit shittier, as my mind wouldn't be so easily distracted by the lovliness outside.

But today, it's cold and wet. The house is freezing, my first few attempts to light the fire were hampered by damp sticks, outside the rain is lashing down and I'll be buggered if I'm going out in it.

And I've discovered I've got a flat tyre

Marvellous. I'm going to have to put the spare on, got try and inflate the flat one — and if that doesn't work, get a new tyre.

*strop strop strop*

(¹ You know this "Damm lecturers, they get loads of time off" thing BTW? It's not true. I'm currently spending my normal working hours updating website things, and trying to write a few scripts to make everyone's lives easier. Just so you know)

Ah, nope — it ignores (on the whole) what people other than me say. Not because I don't think what other people say isn't valuable, it's just that the old search thing used to say "Erin found X days where Siobhan said:", and IMHO it looked a bit daft when it wasn't me saying it.

The reason it picked up on "douches", is because that was me quoting you.

When I do get around to finishing it and tidying it (like making it only get whole words rather than words-within-words, for example), I'll have a little checkbox to "search comments as well".

Tenuous Graphical Subtexts

tranniefesto logo

Lordy. Jon Hicks has redesigned his logo. I'm in, um, two minds really, but while I'm waiting for his "Reasons, explanations and talk about the process", I thought I'd do something I've been promising myself I'd do for ages, and explain the rationale behind mine.

Firstly, I think I should mention that in my head, there's a great big difference in function between the Tranniefesto logo:

and my Avatar:

(Note to self: update the colour of that logo)

My problem is, that I'm not entirely sure what that difference is. In some senses, I use my Avatar to represent me in various online forums and on other people's weblogs — but (as I've tried to talk about several times) I often see this weblog itself as an Avatar.

But still. Never mind

The initial source for the little devily logo, is my old male logo:

There's a whole other story involved in why I had a little imp as a logo — part of it was because when I had short hair, I often had two little tufts sticking up either side of my head — but let's not go there.

To get from that to what's currently at the top left of the screen seems obvious, but there were a couple of steps in between — the most noticable being a few sketches I made when I was trying to come up with something for the Sparkle logo:

I've always been a fan of chunky, simple shapes — especially circles — and I was trying to elaborate on the tiarra (that eventually ended up being the Sparkle logo all by itself) a little by including the symbol for Mercury...

In Greek mythology, Aphrodite (Venus) had a child with Mercury (Hermes). The child was named Hermaphroditus and possessed both male and female genitalia. Thus the origin of the word hermaphrodite. Since Hermaphroditus didn't have a specific symbol, the symbol for Mercury was borrowed in this instance to represent a transgendered person.

(from www.lamda.org)

So, starting from that, I wanted to develop a symbol for myself that kinda worked on those levels.

I'm not really a fan of the transgender logos that have a cross and an arrow on them — to signify male and female. There's something that jars in me with them. Personally, I'm not comfortable with the idea that I represent both male and female (I am, after all, just a bloke in a dress). And even though you could probably argue with me that using the symbol for Mercury was probably even worse (since I'm not a hermaphrodite), it seemed like an interesting and unusual starting point.

So, all I did was tweak the crescent moon on the top of the symbol — to link it back to my old imp-logo (the imp's called "Pic" BTW) and make a pair of horns.

But I still wanted to have some element of the male and female symbols going on — just not in the usual way. And that's what the '^' and '+' are.

Granted, it's tenuous, but the '^' is suppose to be a bit like the arrow on the male symbol, and the '+', obviously, the cross on the female symbol.

Why do it like that? Well, firstly they work within the space — doing an actual arrow looked too cluttery. Secondly, I like how it hints at my codey nature (I'll come back to that), and thirdly, it's a bit cryptic.

And I like cryptic. Cryptic means people think you have depth — even when you don't I imagined (probably erroneously to be honest) scores of people scratching their heads wondering what this odd little symbol meant.

(Bet none of you have )

But something that I really like about it, is that retrospectively I keep seeing other little meanings in it.

First off, if it was character class inside of a Regular Expression, it would sorta translate as "Match anything that is not a girl" (I know, tenuous at best)

Secondly — as I discovered on day in Second Life — if I turn ii upside down, it kinda looks like it says "TV"...

...

Anyway, there you go. Now if anyone would like to buy some happy mug/tshirt-based Tranniefesto merchandising...

Who Is This?

photo

Lacking anything resembling Joanna 's proposal for proper interactive TV, I thought I'd ask the audience".

This guy is trying to sell me life insurance, but I'm sure I recognise him. At first, I thought it was Roy Castle — but that would be ironic/impossible/tasteless.

Anyone know him?

See, for some reason I also thought "Christopher Timothy" — but it's not him either.

Hmm, maybe, but I'm not convinced. This is going to bug me I feel.

On a similar note, Nigel Havers tried to sell me 'bespoke' radiator coverings a few minutes ago...

...its enough to make a girl wanna get pissed.

More than there are radiators in the world

All hail the power of Becky's text-messaging abilities