Posted in Poetry, Science, Science Fiction, Video, Visual Crafts, tagged 3D graphics, 42³, 6*9, art, Douglas Adams, Mayavi, numpy, python, Schneepflug, Science, science fiction, SciPy, The Answer, The Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything on November 18, 2014| Leave a Comment »
A 42-cube, which reads 42 from three directions, a project I have wanted to realise for fifteen years, but until recently I thought it was impossible. Then I realised that given appropriate rotations combined with an appropriate font, it could be done.
This quick mockup was made using NumPy, SciPy and Mayavi. Ultimately, I would like to have it in physical form, but there remains some tweaking for that to be feasible.
Rotating 42-cube.
Posted in Cartography, Poetry, Politics, Songs, Visual Crafts, tagged abundant appendices, Always coming home, ammar, ammaresti, An Illustrated History of Sloths, Anarchism, Anarres, azimuthal, borders, bug fix, cartography, cylindrical, equal-area, equidistant, equirectangular, fan-cartography, fan-poetry, footnotes, Gadamer, Gethen, Git, imperialism, Kesh, Lambert, Le Guin, Learn Create Tell, Los dos gallos, maps, mülksüzler, no borders, obesuttna, Odo, orthographic, planetary survey, Politics, projections, rectangular, Shevek, Song, stereographic, Svarta tupp, Tau Ceti, The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness, true journey is return, Truth and Method, Urras, Ursula K. Le Guin, Winter on January 15, 2013| 3 Comments »
Warning: Wall of Text!
This was supposed to be a post about some maps I’ve drawn, but it turned into a minor essay (featuring fifteen footnotes and two poems). This regularly happens when I set about describing my work (this paragraph is no exception). I am terrible at leaving unimportant details out of the picture. Since the readership of this blog is very limited, however, I have decided that it is all right this way. I wrote it mostly for myself anyway. If you don’t want to read about my love for maps and my love for the works of Ursula K. Le Guin, feel free to jump to the maps, or got to Get Stuff where you will find more versions. (I also made some animations of the planets revolving which can be found in a follow-up post.) If, on the other hand, you are interested in the background to and process involved in the making of the maps, you are more than welcome to continue reading.
Breaking News! New and improved versions of the maps available here!
I’ve always loved maps.
I remember, that when I first discovered fantasy (through The Hobbit, as it were), for many years I held the opinion, that a map was a sure sign of a good novel. If there were ample appendices or a word-list for a made up foreign tongue, all the better! I have since realised that a map is not a sure sign that a book is worth my time, and that not all the appendices in the world could save a bad book from being bad read — I remember one fantasy heptology in particular, whose appendices were beyond most in ambition, but whose story soon dwindled from acceptable to dull, and in the end turned offensively stupid. But I still hold, that a mediocre book can be saved by an inspired map, and that a good map always makes a good book more memorable.
After The Hobbit, I read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (great appendices), Eddings (mediocre, but good maps) and the Earthsea trilogy by Le Guin (excellent and with excellent maps [0]). At some point I discovered Science Fiction, and started to prefer it to Fantasy, even though science fiction novels seem to be utterly devoid of maps. Until I discovered The Dispossessed. Science fiction, by an author I knew I liked, from having read The Word for World is Forest and the Earthsea books — with a map!
Posted in Co-operative writing, Pica Challenge, Poetry, tagged Death, emotional labour, finishes, poem, wordnik on November 3, 2012| Leave a Comment »
My dear friend Dr Grijndvar recently shared a thoughtful piece on his view on death, exemplified by a touching account of his relationship with his paternal grandmother.
Inspired by this, I thought I would take his advice of thinking of those dead and gone, and share a short piece of poetry that I wrote as a part of the “word-challenge” I was engaged in with Pica pica this spring. The word under scrutiny this time was “finsihes,” and the result (at long last) was the short piece below. It may not be entirely obvious, but each verse relates to someone dead and missed in my life.
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Posted in Poetry, tagged cable, calf, carmine, Dar-es-Salaam, dogs, giants, London Bridge, Poetry, red, scarlet, sheep, shoe laces, shoes, Tanzania, Tide, walking on February 21, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Being bored with just watching the tide come in in Dar-es-Salaam — this horrible blotch on an otherwise superb country — I wrote this poem. The quality reflects the quality of sleep I got while in Dar. (more…)
Posted in Co-operative writing, Poetry, tagged Adultery, Battle, Creative Commons, Cuckoldry, dagger, Death, Deragatory remarks, Fat people, Fight, Parody, Poetry, Post-Vanburenism, Sex, Skype, Struggle, Swedish on January 11, 2011| Leave a Comment »
This poem may require some explanation. In essence, it was written almost in real time (I have only corrected some spelling mistakes) during a Skype session, when Skyman suddenly presented me with the first line, set to the rhythm of one of the parts of Johan Ludwig Runeberg’s “Fänrik Ståls Sägner”, a great collection of war poetry from Sweden’s last war. I added the following lines, and so it continued until Skyman got tired and made a hurried ending to it. “S” denotes the lines given by Skyman, whereas “G” are the lines written by me.
A post-vanburenist is a follower of the critics of Jochem Josquin Van Buren, the famous 23rd century philosopher, scuba-diver, re-designer of the Bracknell Upright, and literary critic. Obviously. It should be noted that Skyman is a firm believer in post-vanburenism.
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grijndvar
Stian Rødven Eide
quantacat
skymandr
Eintritt Verboten 