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the various and sundry creations of sylvus tarn
10jul2020
My step-back from the internets ain't going so well, if the list of linkies in my daily journal is to be believed, but on the other hand, I turned on my torch for the first time since May, so today's page is my reward. Emphasis on the my, sorry.
I remember my dad's homophobia, which was based, upon other things, the fear that homosexuals (specifically, gay men) were pedophiles; or at least, a much greater proportion of gays were pedophiles. Predators. That was a big argument, back in the late 80s and 90s. So glad we're done with it. (Mostly: I mean, it's not part of the average discourse the way it used to be, much like, say, “women drivers” still was during my childhood. Progess, however slow.) —Except we're not! Now it's transpeople who are the rapists and child molesters.
6jul2020
uggggghhhhh, atsui desu yo (it's hot!)
So, gee, this was a fun weekend. As I mention in the linked page, Frederick Douglass’ famous 4th of July speech is more relevant than ever; Daveed Diggs, from Hamilton, has an updated version. Meanwhile we have all these crappy white people (I do feel sorry for all the kind and good Karens out there) ...being crap.
For my very own personally possibly crappy moment, I would like to push back, ever so gently, upon this article about the linguistics of BIPOC. The activists, understandibly, would like the average (ahem) Karen to take the time and trouble to learn how to use all these various labels—Black, PoC, BIPOC, Indigenous (which I gather is a big no-no in Australia)—with nuance.
3jul2020
Hey, might as well continue to clean out some ancient links (i.e. about a decade old—the page I stuck them on dates back to early 2010, how time flies...) Here's a cute one made in 2006 featuring animated typography; youtube obligingly popped another short (from 2010...) about Helvetica that in about 5 seconds or less illustrates why it's so much better than the beautifully named & deeply despised Arial. I thought I had a decent understanding of basic typography history, but I still learned something in this short discussion (not least of which is that I like the older roman typefaces better than the transitional or modern ones...)
One reason I bring all this up is that the doodling has resparked an interest in the related discipline of callig in general and English Roundhand (what is usually called copperplate, just as Black Letter is generally called “Old English”) or its US equivalent, Engrosser's Script, in particular. Zanerian.com has a wealth of good info, as for example these old scans of E.L. Brown's instructions.
2jul2020
Well, I lost the link for the hand-made trumpet artisan article I'd planned for today, so I'm slotting in this ancient (but still live!) link about the mandelbulb, the 3D version of the mandelbrot. It actually kind of reminds me of...the surface of the 2019 coronavirus. (Mostly, I'm sure, because the underlying math is the same—I find it more than a little fascinating that the same math that makes ripples in sand makes stripes in animals...)
Other links hanging around include this waaaaay-above-my-pay-grade bodyweight workout by Sterling K Brown (whom I've only encountered in Frozen) but came off as a really sweet guy. It's not necessarily the sort of thing you expect for a leading man actor, and I was happy to discover it, ’cuz I need all the faith in humanity restored I can find. And I do actually know at least one person who could do this workout:)
1jul2020
Yesterday, ahem, two days ago, f2tE picked up Colleen Doran's splendid new graphic adaptation of Neil Gaiman's “Snow, Glass, Apples.”
Let's get the summary review out of the way first: Doran has been drawing comics for 45 years, and this work shows her clear mastery of the medium. Though she draws in a variety of styles, she's most in her element when her love of elegant line, fabric folds, and elaborate decoration is allowed to shine.
Since this book's style is explicitly a tribute to the turn of the century stained glass artist and illustrator Harry Clark—who also had a love of line, fabric folds and intricate decorative motifs, it's gorgeous. The cover, for which both f2tE and I mistook as a nod to the roughly contemporaneous Erte, is actually a splendid homage to Clark's illustrations, and possibly my favourite image in the work.
30jun2020
Part of the reason the middle of last week dropped out was that I accidentally took a vacation from the internet by dint of binging on a bunch of Ring of Fire novels—I started, IIRC with The Ram Rebellion, because it had a woman co-author (& I was pretty sure I'd read the first two years ago) then went back and re-read those, plus a couple of others; then Katherine Addison's delightful Angel of the Crows dropped, and I spent another day or two reading (& re-reading) this wonderful pastiche of Sherlock Holmes re-imagined as an angel.
Why yes, it did start out as a Sherlock wingfic, as the author readily admits in the back of the book; but her editor thought the buying public would also enjoy this kitchen sink fantasy-atmospheric horror novel, and in my case, she was absolutely correct: I found out about the book even before it was promoted on Whatever, and between the fact that Tor put healthily large chunks to sample and the ebook was DRM free, I immediately (had the wizard) [to] purchase(d) it.
