Sawyer Paul's Blog, page 88
August 17, 2012
More things, August 17, 2012
Newspaper sculptures by Yun-Woo Choi
More lit things:
A story is an engagement although it can be protracted. A novel is a campaign
I prefer to steal from my friends
...a few hits, a few misses, and a few yet-to-be-determined. But this kind of inventory doesn't quite convey the most interesting part of the experience, which is the feeling of reading through your own words describing new ideas as they are occurring to you for the first time.
More ruthless things:
Some people feel that if they don’t cheat they put themselves at a competitive disadvantage...
VICE’s Ryan Duffy went to Colombia to check out a strange and powerful drug called Scopolamine, also known as “The Devil’s Breath.” It’s a substance so intense that it renders a person incapable of exercising free will.
We're building a real-time social service where users who have $50 and developers who have $100 come get to tell people that they have $50 or $100, respectively.
August 15, 2012
Playing with Layer Blending in Photoshop
I love the photography work by tibonihoo on Flickr, partially because he's one of many great photographers who allow their work to be remixed (I'm a big fan of remixing). So, for the purpose of this example, I'm going to be using three of his photographs to create a number of cool images using layer masking. It's incredibly simple, and it's how a lot of my hobbyist graphic design gets started.
Layer masking works best when you've got texture-based images, I find, so I'm going to use these three:
On the river Styx
Goblin's hide-out
Ugly Duckling
By simply choosing different layer masks with different opacities, you can easily create something new and possibly very interesting. What I like most about playing around in here is that every image added to the fold creates a new set of variants. It's one of the more fun things Photoshop offers. Also, you can toggle through the layer options really quickly with the shift and - and + keys.
With the top image on Overlay and the second image on Darken, You get something like this:
[image error][image error]
With the top image on Color, and the second image on Hard Mix, you get something like this:
[image error]Finally, with the top image in Darker Colour and the second layer on Hard Light, you get something like this:
[image error]I almost never finish off an item using only these tools. In fact, sometimes I'll just see a bit of an image that changed in a way I like and then build from there. But because this is so fast and easy, it's a nice starting point.
August 14, 2012
Rename part of a series of files
Here's a quick tip. Want to rename a bunch of files, but you only want to rename part of the filepath? Automator does incredibly quick work of this:
[image error]Just add whatever files you want changed, then drag in "Replace text in finder item names". Select "Replace text" from the menu, paste in the bit you want changed, and write the new text.
This is best udsed for photo files, as their names are automatically generated by your camera, but also working files on single projects.
More Things, August 14, 2012
More Video Game Things
Ever wonder what your favorite novels would look like as 8-bit video games?
'The Triforce of Bass' is three pay-what-you-want Zelda remix EPs
More Noir Things
Las Noir: A Photobook by Siren O'Brien
Noir’s Female Authors Are Making the Genre Awesome Again [Books]
The Dark Knight Decides: Sovereignty and the Superhero, part 1, and part 2
August 13, 2012
An idea for Textexpander
I love Textexpander[1]. It has saved me countless hours of repetitive typing. Every email signature, misspelled word, markdown syntax shortcut, and form email has been a blessing that I’ve never taken for granted.
I have an idea for a major new feature that would make the app even more intuitive.
The only kind of annoying thing about Textexpander is setting up snippets in the first place. First, you have to notice that you’re typing the same thing repetitiously over a period of time. Then, you have to remember to write it in Textexpander. Then, you have to fiddle with it until it’s perfect, because I almost never write exactly what I want in Textexpander the first time.[2]
If you use 1password, you notice that when you create a new account somewhere, the app will ask you if you want to save this new password. What if Textexpander watched your keystrokes, and then suggested snippets based on your typing?
Say it remembered a database of things you wrote that were less than 100 words (this is something you’d get to toggle), and every time you wrote pretty much exactly the same thing twice (or three times, or whatever. Another toggle), it would send an alert, asking if you’d like to turn this into a snippet. If you select yes, the whole thing is turned into a new snippet. Several steps are saved, and you end up using Textexpander more. Everyone wins. It would ignore writing longer than 100 words consecutively, so it wouldn’t even be remembering all that many things.
If this feature exists in Textexpander 4 (I haven’t upgraded yet), someone please tell me.
It’s a bylaw of the internet to preface every article about Textexpander with "I love Textexpander. ↩
This could just be me. ↩
August 10, 2012
More things: August 10, 2012
Image made with Orbits, a new font
More Link Blog Things
My favourite link blog: READ.LOOK.THINK. 38
More Lit Things
The Millions : He Hit Send: On the Awkward but Necessary Role of Technology in Fiction
Everything in Writing and Life is Fiction : The New Yorker
Race, Class, App.net: The Beginning of ‘White Flight’ from Facebook & Twitter?
August 8, 2012
Markdown Primer
Markdown is a writing syntax, much like rich text or Microsoft Word's formatting. The difference is that it's usable with plain text files like these (.txts). Why this is important is twofold: You can use txts with any computer or phone past or present, and they're not tied to a single app (like Word files). This makes them platform agnostic and future proof, two pretty neat things in the geek world.
But plain text files have an obvious limitation: formatting. That's where markdown comes in. Using any number of apps, or the Markdown dingus online, using Markdown syntax, you can write HTML or formatted text using a much simpler set of tools.
Whereas in HTML, italicizing something means you have to type it like this: <i>this is italicized</i>, with Markdown, you only have to do this: _this is italicized_. That sort of trickery scales to every kind of formatting I know, from headers to footnotes. In fact, I learned Markdown because I could never remember how to do footnotes using normal HTML. It's much easier, and far more readable.
John Gruber, writer of Daring Fireball, a really good tech blog, made this thing up. If you like, you can read the whole reasoning here. Personally, I use Markdown to write all my novels, blog posts, tweets, and pretty much whatever else. Because of it, I haven't opened Microsoft Word in years, and have no files that can't be opened anywhere, on any computer or phone.
Brett Terpstra, another big tech writer, wrote an even better endorsement for it than I have.
David Sparks, a lawyer and tech writer, even made a podcast episode about it, if you've got the time.
Naturally, this was written in Markdown, and published with Squarespace, which accepts Markdown text just as easily as normal text.
Gradient Mesh Snake
Created with three overlapping gradient maps.
More Things: August 8, 2012
More Free Things
Free PSD's of Apple file and folder icons
Free PSD of Apple's Finder Window
More Lit Things
The Proust Interview: James Ross-Edwards
Writers and readers on Twitter and Tumblr: We need more criticism, less Liking
Peering Into the Exquisite Life of Rare Books
More Password Things
How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking
After Epic Hack, Apple Suspends Over-the-Phone AppleID Password Resets
