Zen and the Art of Prop Making

Prop Making Tips Reminder

2011-11-23T20:03:00.006+11:00

Thanks for dropping by.

I just want to remind visitors that all the prop making related posts have been removed from this blog and have been transferred to the DecoWorks website.

The aim is to have all the props and decor posts on the DecoWorks website and the whimsical and capricious items on the Zen site.

You may also like to visit my Sydney Art Deco Heritage website. I have recently transferred all the Art Deco Sydney (plus some New Zealand and other countries) architectual posts to this site.

Enjoy :-)

Automated Comment Spam

2011-10-30T20:40:00.003+11:00

A big problem with a blogs is the huge amount of time wasted dealing with automated comment spam. Their primary purpose is link building for better search engine optimisation and also for generating traffic to generally irrelevant commercial websites. The comment spam content is usually vague and general in nature having little relevance to the posts targeted.

Recently the comment spam content has been socially engineered in the hope of increasing the chance of the comment being approved and published in a blog. Much of this type of comment flatters the bloggers writing style or depth of knowledge on *the subject*. It is the bloggers ego that is targetted in these instances.

Controlling comment spam
The blunt solution for controlling comment spam could be to simply remove the comment option on every post in the blog. Voila! No more spam. While this definitely solves the problem the down side is you sacrifice any reader interaction with the post.

Some posts seem to receive far more spam than others. This happens due to the comment spam robots ability to store open post links when they are discovered and share them with other people using the same software. It is like a mailing list for the spam software. When a post gets identified in this this way I simply remove its comment option. This fixes the problem immediately. After a period of time the spam robot recognises that that post is no longer open and deletes that link from its database.

The Wizard of Id

2011-10-30T20:28:00.004+11:00

The Wizard of Id was first created in 1964 as a result of the collaboration of writer Johnny Hart and artist Brant Parker. In the early 60's Hart was already successful with his creation of BC. The pair first met in 1950 when Parker was asked to judge a high school art contest. One of the entrants work so impressed him he organised a meeting. The entrants name was Johnny Hart.

Wizard of Id humour
The Wizard of Id is set in the mythical kingdom of Id ruled by "the King", a dwarfish monarch with a dry and, at times, black secnse of humour. As well as the Kings subjects (Idiots) there are several other major characters including Rodney the inept knight, the wizard and his domineering wife, Bung the court jester who is constanting drunk and the Spook, a destitute prisoner who is locked in his cell with only the Turnkey for company. There are several other players which are described in detail in Wikipedia.

The King and the Wizard have a great relationship and a very dry sense of humour. The Wizard of Id is one of my favourite comic strips and I found the one below very amusing and thought I'd share it.

The Wizard of Id was named best humour strip by the National Cartoonists Society in 1971.

Duck Tron

2011-08-27T09:58:00.000+10:00

The original TRON movie was an exciting voyage into a virtual word where anything was possible so seeing the title paired with the word "duck" piqued my curiosity.

I don't know why but there is something inherently funny about a duck or anything relating to them. I discovered this video ad for duct tape which, if you are familiar with the original TRON, is a witty send up of the classic motorcycle sequence in the movie.

The original TRON

The movie was originally released in 1982 by Walt Disney Pictures and was directed by Steven Lisberger. It starred Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn in the lead role with Bruce Boxleitner in a dual role of program/user Tron.

The movie tells the story of Flynn as he attempts to hack into a major corporations mainframe to prove that they had stolen his work. He gets transported into a virtual digital world as a unique program/User. Here he teams up with Tron, one of his creations, to defeat the Master Control Program, who has been controlling the virtual world.

Many props from the original film were used in TRON Legacy. You need a sharp eye and be very familiar with the original film to recognise these props in the film.

Duck Tron from Ryactive on Vimeo.

TRON:Legacy was a recently released sequel to the original film.

Spirit Rover Lost

2011-05-26T21:57:00.004+10:00

The now lost Spirit rover mission, initially planned to last 90 days, landed on Mars in January 2004 and sent data back to Earth for more than six years.

However, with two damaged drive wheels and getting stuck in the sand in May 2009 and with its solar panels facing away from the sun, the Spirit rover did not have sufficient power to operate its internal heaters and didn't survive the bitter Martian winter where temperatures dropped to minus 67 degrees Farenheit.

No contact from Spirit rover

Last communication with the Mars Spirit rover was March 22nd, 2010. Despite efforts to regain communication over the past several months NASA officials have decided it is a lost cause and will be *closing the book* on the mission this week.

The Spirit rover twin, Opportunity, is still functioning on the other side of the planet and has travelled over 18 miles since its arrival in 2004 and is on its way to Endeavour Crater.

More information about the Mars Spirit rover and other rover missions can be found here.

Prop Making

2011-04-29T12:55:00.009+10:00

All prop making tips and related posts have been deleted from this site and have been transferred to the DecoWorks Prop Making page on the new DecoWorks website.

Rather than updating duplicate material I have found it better to concentrate on the one location for all prop making related articles and information. I apologise for any inconvenience.

Escher's Waterfall Illusion

2011-04-29T10:15:00.000+10:00

The Waterfall Illusion by Escher, like his other drawings, is a sublime example of 3D illusions drawn in 2D. Some of the images are not so impossible to recreate in real life.

A recent example I discovered was his 1961 drawing of a Waterfall Illusion recreated in real life. The illusion only works from one viewpoint but this is necessary with many illusions.

How the Waterfall Illusion works

While most two-dimensional artists use relative proportions to create an illusion of depth, Escher here and elsewhere uses conflicting proportions to create the visual paradox. The Waterfall Illusion has the structure of a Penrose triangle, an impossible object designed independently by Roger Penrose and Oscar Reutersvärd.

Below is a video of a clever model reconstruction of the Waterfall Illusion drawing. Using elements cut in perspective the illusion comes alive when seen from a particular viewpoint. Many Renaissance churches used this single viewpoint idea to achieve fantastic effects on their ceilings where a domed vault looks like a square tower rising to the heavens.

Below is a more *bare bones* setup of the Waterfall Illusion where we are not shown the setup from different perspectives.

Relevant Content

2011-04-26T16:32:00.001+10:00

When searching for information on the Internet you want relevant content in your search results. Usually you get relevant content for your query in the first few pages of results. If the information you seek is more than 6 months old it will be buried beneath tens of millions of irrelevant results because it is deemed not relevant enough to make it to the top of search results. This makes the relevant content you are after virtually impossible to find.

Google judges relevant content as content that is updated regularly as opposed to static content. An historical document is static content but it is still relevant content. Static historical content should be just as accessable as regularly updated content and should not be prioritised in importance by companies who control access to this information and have a financial interest in search results. Is this trend what we have to look forward to in the future? It's hardly a satisfactory state of affairs.

"What's Hot" vs "Relevant content that matters"

The Internet is a repository for historical information which originally got there because it was relevant. Being monetarily driven the Internet has become the ultimate marketing tool that promotes current trends and fashions to the detriment of the bedrock of information on which those very trends and fashions have been based.

While this is inevitable in a market driven economy such as ours surely being able to readily access recent historical information would be advantageous to the curious spirit? Unfortunately curious spirits are not a lucrative market.

Where we are now as a society is a direct result of what has gone before. Content shoud not be penalised in search results for being static in the historical sense.

This article about relevant content will be updated periodically to maintain its relevance ;-P

Rubik Cube Robot

2011-01-02T10:25:00.000+11:00

A quick search on YouTube for Rubik cube robots will illustrate how many people have devoted their time to solving this puzzle.

There are robots that look like humans that have been designed to solve the Rubik cube puzzle but they seem clunky and awkward in their operation. They do finally solve the puzzle but none of them do it as quickly as Ruby, the brainchild of students at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

Not only does Ruby solve the Rubik cube puzzle in record time but her design and operation is a beauty to behold. Ruby is also a work of art and a credit to her designers.

YouTube Videos of Rubik cube

You think Ruby is fast solving the Rubik cube puzzle? It is still not as fast as a human. Below is world champion Feliks Zemdegs solving the Rubic cube puzzle in record time of 6.24 seconds! Will robotics ever achieve the blinding dexterity of the human hand?

More Rubik cube videos available on YouTube.

Exoskeleton Suit

2010-09-28T10:27:00.001+10:00

The idea of a mechanised suit that gives a human being super strength is not new. Numerous examples of an exoskeleton suit can be found in movies such as Aliens, Iron Man and, more recently, Avatar and District 9. Most people will appreciate how fanciful such concepts are, particularly with modern advances in CGI technology.

A practical exoskeleton suit

In a good example of life imitating art, the folks at Raytheon have made some pretty impressive steps in making the concept of an exoskeleton suit a reality. The video below shows a working example of the XOS 2, a tethered exoskeleton suit which gives its human operator super strength.

Quality or Economic Manufacture

2010-07-05T20:44:00.001+10:00

Deciding between quality or economic manufacture of products present a challenge to companies wanting to develop new markets. With money tight customers have to consider the pros and cons of quality or economic products. They are more likely to accept cheaper, lower quality products (or even dispense with them altogether) rather than spend a bit more on a quality product.

A financially conservative approach may appear an appropriate path in the short term however the mid to long term consequences of economically driven decisions should be carefully assessed.

A well made, quality product that is pleasing to the eye carries those qualities with it through time. Poor quality products may do their job initially but actually get worse over time. Any initial savings are quickly dissipated.

Good quality or economic choices
There are times when a product is used only once so its manufacture can be more cosmetic. Products of this nature are easy to provide as they can be quickly made with a minimum of planning. The final product might look good on the outside but it may fail spectacularly on the inside. A product may only be cosmetic but it doesn’t excuse it from the engineering realities of the world. The balance between engineering and cosmetics is a fundamental aspect of any product whether it be a one-off prop, a long running production prop or a simple garden wall. Ignoring this balance is an area where serious errors (and injury) can occur.

"If people are prepared to accept poor quality goods and services
there will always be those who profit by providing them"

The challenge in quality manufacture lies not in the physical work but in having a clear understanding of what is required and how it’s going to be applied. Careful planning prior to manufacture helps identify problems before they become expensive mistakes. The time spent in this planning phase is more than offset by the time saved when doing the actual work and, in the longer term, not having to correct any mistakes.

Many companies can provide quality goods because of the procedural nature of their manufacture. They may, however, run into problems when manufacturing something that is"outside the square". A new product for a customer will eventually be completed but any overruns, caused by a lack of planning or inexperience in a specific area are borne by the customer. These overruns are generally blamed on unforeseen circumstances but many can be avoided or at least minimised with prior planning and preparation.

Do the best you can first time around because, quality or economic considerations aside, you may not get the luxury of a second chance.

Quality or economic considerations aside, there must be a market in the first place for a product.

Congratulations Rolf Harris

2010-07-05T20:33:00.001+10:00

Octagenerian Rolf Harris has just just celebrated his 65 years as a painter. At a recent knees up in London to celebrate his birthday Rolf Harris made an observation about people who get to retirement and then do what they have really wanted to do all their life. He couldn't understand why they hadn't done what they enjoyed doing *ALL* their life!

Rolf Harris the painter
Rolf Harris was well known in Australia for many years as an entertainer particularly for his comedy songs "Tie me Kangaroo Down Sport" and "Jake The Peg". His ability to paint large pictures in super fast time displayed his great talent. More recently a television documentary made about his painting a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II made for interesting viewing and gave an insight into his technique.

Great guy, great entertainer and thanks for the wobble board!

Rube Goldberg Machine

2010-06-08T10:33:00.000+10:00

Rube Goldberg was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer and inventor. He was born in 1883 and died in 1970 and was best known for his cartoons depicting impossibly complicated machines doing very simple tasks. Any device that is designed to do a very simple task in a highly complicated fashion is known as a Rube Goldberg machine.

We all remember as kids seeing a room full of dominos falling in patterns after one is knocked over triggering a chain reaction. The same concept was used in another Rube Goldberg machine - the game called Mousetrap where a ball operates an interconnected series of chutes, levers and buttons on the machine.

The "OK Go" Rube Goldberg machine

I saw this OK Go video for the first time today and the technical aspects of their machine blew me away. This Rube Goldberg machine that the band OK Go built takes the concept and launches it into the stratosphere! Here is the official OK Go video for the recorded version of "This Too Shall Pass" off of the album "Of the Blue Colour of the Sky". The video was filmed in a two story warehouse, in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. The Rube Goldberg machine was designed and built by the band, along with members of Syyn Labs over the course of several months.

If nothing else the band OK Go have proved they can make great Rube Goldberg machines!

Dumb Comment Spam

2010-06-03T20:49:00.001+10:00

The rising popularity of automated comment spam software targeting blogs is annoying. The only thing they have to offer is a bit of entertainment in how badly they are written and how natural sounding they try to be.

Comment spam promising to bookmark my posts, informing that they will be telling all their friends how informative my posts are and that they will be coming back again soon leaves me breathless with anticipation.

Dumber and dumber comment spam

I've decided to dedicate a post to comment spam I've received. All comment spam had no relevance whatsoever to the associated post content and all had URL's linking back to commercial sites. I'm sure you will find much of this comment spam familiar. I've rated them on a score of 1-10 within a category for a bit of fun.

- You post great articles. Bookmarked !
(1/10 for originality)

- Pretty nice article. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say that I have really enjoyed browsing your blog posts. In any case I'll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you write again soon!
(5/10 for sincerity)

- Im grateful for the blog post.Thanks Again. Really Great.
(3/10 for sincerity)

- omg ok so here's just how ridiculous I am, midway through looking through your post I dropped my sensitive mouse and closed the site in error and I couldn't locate your article again right up until 4 days later to finish reading from the spot i had left off simply because I didn't remember how I linked to your site in the first place ahaha anyhow it was worth the delay..thank you :)
(9/10 for original story line - could be a movie!)

- This really is what I have been finding all day. I should have found your blog post faster.
(8/10 for stupidity )

- You post informative articles. Bookmarked !
(10/10 for blandness)

- I would like to thank you for the endeavors you’ve made in publishing this write-up. I’m trusting the same best perform from you from the long term as well. Actually your fanciful writing abilities has inspired me to start my own weblog now. Sincerel…
(2/10 for English skills)

- I am an student and i am willing to write some part of this post to my university blog,can i do so.Also just require your permit just mail me if you are happy about it. i believe this post will be helpful for the info i am wanting to publish.
(1/10 for grammer - he is at University???)

- Great info, thanks for useful post. I am waiting for more
(8/10 for optimism)

- Your blog is very interesting, i have bookmarked your site for future referrence :)
(7/10 for boring attitude)

- hey,just found your Post on google and i must say this blog is great.may I share some of the writing found in your website to my local students?i'm not sure and what you think?in any case,Many thanks!
(1/10 for grammar - he is teaching our kids?)

- Hi,I obtain that your blog is very beneficial and useful and we were interested if there is a possibility of acquiring More articles like this on your web site. If you willing to assist us out, we will be willing to compensate you... Sincerely, Mui Appl
(3/10 for business sense)

- Nice! There’s good info here. I did a search on the topic and found most people will agree with your blog. :-D
(6/10 for generality)

- Gdzie mozna sciagnac template ktory uzyles na swoium blogu ?
(10/10 for stupidity in posting on an English site)

- Very good information for me!I just want to get more info about china
(4/10 for relevance)

- This story is truely an enchanting gift
(1/10 for sincerity )

- I was just scanning this posting and was reminded of what I once read.
(8/10 for stupidity)

- You have presented us the reality behind
(1/10 for English translation)

- To be honest I haven’t read all of your story yet, but it is so wonderful to know that people like you keep their soul so young.
(0/10 for honesty)

Technology Overload

2010-02-28T20:52:00.000+11:00

Live performances nowadays depend on high-tech equipment and go for the *WOW* factor of huge LCD screens and light shows. It's understandable, given the size of the crowds being entertained, but in this age of technology how many of us watch the video screens instead of the live performance? Indirectly we have become totally dependent on the technology available to us today and the power it requires to function. A refreshing change was a concert last year in Melbourne celebrating "Earth Hour". The power for the concert was generated the week prior to the event by 16 cyclists pedaling 12 hours a day to charge up batteries. It highlighted how dependent we have become on power to keep our technology (and entertainment) working.

The growth of technology

What did people do ten, fifty or one hundred years ago at similar events? The 1925 Exposition of Decorative Arts in Paris was an extraordinary event from what I've seen from photos and commentary of the time. Electricity was first used to illuminate the Eiffel Tower with a huge Citroen advertisement. Earlier events start getting difficult to imagine because they didn't have the technology to faithfully record daily life and events. Unlike today, which must be the most detailed record of human activity to date, there was only the written word and created objects (including paintings and drawings) left to give any hint of what everyday life really looked like.

In this age of the silicon chip we are surrounded by LCD screens, CCD arrays capturing the moment and instant global communications via the Internet. It's sobering to remember that just 130 years ago, in 1880, the first electric light bulb was patented by Thomas Edison. Thirteen years later in 1893 the first 3 phase power generator opened at the Mill Creek hydroelectric plant near Redlands, California.

Only 110 years ago, in 1900, the Wright brothers left the ground at Kitty Hawk followed 68 years later by the first Boeing 747-100 rolling out of a hanger in Seattle! A year later saw Apollo 11 taking Neil Armstrong to the moon while we watched it all on television in the comfort of our loungerooms at home.

In 2005 the wunderkind of the 21st century, the Airbus A380, had its maiden flight. It is a double-deck, wide bodied airliner that can carry 853 passengers.

Today we have two rover's exploring Mars, probes circling Saturn and exploring her moons and in 2015, from the very edge of our solar system, the New Horizon's mission will let us see, for the first time in human history, what Pluto and Charon really look like.

The technological explosion of the 20th century leaves you breathless. Never has so much change been experienced by humankind in one lifetime.

At the heart of all this technology are specialised hardware and software packages. The knowledge base for this arcane technology is akin to a religious order controlled by high priests who guard the mysteries of stored program control, object variables and dynamic link libraries. We all use the technology but what goes on "under the bonnet" is a total mystery. You can't see it, feel it or smell it - unless something goes awfully wrong. And that's usually when the hardware fails. Software problems silently transform sophisticated electronic equipment into useless boxes. When something goes wrong there is little you can do to fix it. Only a handful of people on the planet have any real idea how it all works. Repairing equipment involves identifying "modules" that are faulty and replacing them. Trial and error is the proven repair strategy in today’s high-tech world. It's a little scary. Few people are capable of repairs at the component level on PC boards. They are so cheap to manufacture that it's not worth spending the time to diagnose a fault and do the repair. And if you did have the time, finding documentation to troubleshoot a problem is akin to accessing the Dead Sea scrolls.

Society has become totally dependent on technology. A balance needs to be struck between the offerings of technology and the daily reality of our lives. While the Internet can provide a global network of friends it can simultaneously isolate individuals from their neighbours. We live in a material world and as such need material contact with others otherwise we will withdraw into our own solitary (now virtual!) worlds. This is expressed very well in the movie "The Matrix" where humankind is "cocooned" into individual cells for power generation while their minds are distracted by living in a virtual world. It is not such an outrageous possibility looking at what is happening today.

It falls back to individual responsibility. You can go through life blissfully unaware, consume and die or you can be active and choose to question and expand your experience. Technology is a huge asset in this pursuit although the insights gained are no substitute for real life experience and getting out there and actually *doing* something.

Mechanical Dog Robot

2010-01-15T10:38:00.002+11:00

While researching robots I came across a company who has made a mechanical dog robot. They have made some amazing progress in the science of walking machines.

The company is called Boston Dynamics and they have developed a four legged mechanical dog called, surprise surprise, Big Dog.

Lifelike mechanical dog

As you can see in the video this mechanical dog robot appears almost lifelike in it's movements. At one point a guy tries to push the machine over and it recovers itself! Shots of it navigating an icy surface have to be seen to be believed!

Avatar Review

2009-12-22T21:07:00.002+11:00

Avatar is one of those films that lives up to its hype. You are taken on a fantastic journey to an alien world filled with everything from the dizzying delights of floating island mountains and flourescent jungle plants to the nightmarish horrors of marauding packs of viperwolves and the destructive fury unleashed by the military mind. Like her namesake box the planet Pandora is full of surprises.

The visuals are stunning and bear more than a passing resemblance to the surreal landscapes portrayed in the "Myst" series of computer games from Cyan Software which were first released in 1993. In particular the forest island in "Riven" and the giant tree in the Edanna Age from "Myst - Exile" share many similarities to the wonders in Avatar. Jim Cameron has lifted their surreal landscapes to a new level of immersive realism with the techologies now available today.

Issues of global conservation, concepts of the Earth Mother (or Gaia) and the inter-connectedenes of all living things are touched on. On a deeper level is the question of what constitutes reality and the sense of self or the "soul". What is that Michaelangelo "spark" that powers a "piece of meat" to life?

There are parallels here with the main theme in "The Matrix" except here the idea of leaving one body and entering another for good is raised. Would this "new" life be any more real than the one you left? At least Jake ends up with a great set of legs!

The one scene that jarred with me was seeing the Colonel standing next to his pilot in the cockpit of his shuttle on the way to the Hometree - drinking a cup of coffee. I mean - where did he keep the cappucino machine or kettle? What happened to the cup of coffee when everything eventually hits the fan (literally!) ? A moot point I know but coffee is surely for the war room *before* a sortie. My other minor gripe was the Banshees (birdlike flying reptiles) grabbing the gun ships and flinging them like rag dolls into the cliffs of the floating islands. Surely a flying machine weighing several tens of tonnes would need something a bit more massive than a Banshee weighing several hundred kilos to toss it about so nimbly - particulary while flying with no fulcrum point. It may have had something to do with being in the vortex field (?). They haven't perfected displaying the physics of mass accurately with the CGI yet. Those little details broke the spell momentarily for me but I was drawn back into the magic in no time at all.

Definitely a "must see again" film.

(image credits; newfilmdimension.com & movies.spoilertv.com)

The "Lady Be Good"

2009-09-30T13:59:00.005+10:00

One of the more interesting stories to come out of World War Two was that of a B-24D Liberator bomber called the "Lady Be Good" which failed to return from a mission to Italy in 1943. A search failed to find any trace of the plane or its crew of nine.

The wreckage of the plane was discovered 15 years later in the Libyan Desert. It was another two years before the remains of all but one of the crew were discovered. The plane had become lost in the darkness and eventually ran out of fuel leaving the crew no choice but to parachute into the darkness. The plane eventually crash landed 16 miles south of where the crew had safely landed.

Inspiration from the "Lady be Good"

This fascinating story can be read in detail here.

The story also became the plot for an opera called "Madelaine Lee".

Star Trek - 2009

2009-09-30T10:05:00.001+10:00

I confess to being a Trekkie from way back so I *had* to see the new Star Trek movie. I thought they did a great job. The starship NCC-1701 was a beautiful piece of engineering (model making) and you got a real sense of its internal structure. The props were excellent and totally believable. Everything was updated with new millenium technology and was faithful in essence to the original starship Enterprise.

Great Star Trek casting

The Star trek cast echoed the original characters accurately and much of the original humour between them was evident in their younger versions in this film. Uhuru's relationship with the young Spock was a surprise however the other characters reacted just as I would have expected. Chris Pine captured Captain Kirk brilliantly when he sat cross legged in his chair on the bridge. The inclusion of Leonard Nimoy as the old Spock provided a great connection with his younger self played by Zachary Quinto. The 17 year old Checkov couldn't have had a thicker Russian accent if he had tried nor Scotty a more Scotttish one.

Many a fond Star Trek memory returned from the original series particularly when McCoy referred to Spock as "a green blooded hobgobblin".

Great entertainment.

Lorem Ipsum - The Facts

2009-03-25T20:20:00.000+11:00

The jibberish text you see in some website templates and page layouts is known as Lorem Ipsum. It is used in the printing and typesetting industries so readers are not distracted by readable text when looking at page layouts. It originated in the 1500s when, so the story goes, a printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. Lorem Ipsum was born and it has remained more or less unchanged since that time and has crossed into the digital domain into desktop publishing software.

The real source of Lorem Ipsum
In reality, Lorum Ipsum it takes its roots from a piece of classical Latin literature written by Cicero in 45BC called "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" or "The Extremes of Good and Evil". Nowadays there are many variations around with the majority having been adulterated with the injection of humour or randomised words. The Lorum Ipsum website warns "you need to be sure there isn't anyhing embarrassing hidden in the middle of the text". They provide a generator of paragraphs, words and lists in Lorum Ipsum which is free of repetition, injected humour and non-characteristic words. You can find this tool on the web at Lorem Ipsum - All the Facts.

The following information is copied from the Lorem Ipsum website.

The standard Lorem Ipsum passage, used since the 1500s
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum."

Section 1.10.32 of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum"
(written by Cicero in 45 BC)

"Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?"

1914 translation by H. Rackham

"But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?"

Source Lorem Ipsum - all the facts

Are Blogs Worth The Effort?

2009-03-25T10:12:00.002+11:00

Is all the time and effort that we put into blogs really worth the effort? We have an initial surge of literary largesse with their first blogging experience but I wonder how many of the plaintive "Hello world" posts have actually been read by a human?

Does anyone ever benefit from blogs? Considering the sheer volume of information available on the Interent today the vast majority are unlikely to become compulsory reading material. Am I too cynical? I'm probably just tired of looking at the computer screen. Working on a computer has an addictive quality and I can be, as a friend recently pointed out, doggedly obsessive when I'm focussed on a project.

Blogs or bogs

I personally don't like the word blog. It sounds heavy and cumbersome - a bit of a downer. Blogs conjure up images of swamps and bogs. Uploading information to a blog seems a contradiction of terms. Dump seems more appropriate. Like some primordial tar pit into which things fall and are then preserved for millions of years. Hmm, it might not be such a bad metaphor after all?

There are millions of blogs in cyberspace and most will never be read except perhaps by family, friends and definitely robots. I guess that's not such a bad thing. After all only your mother could *really* care about what you had for breakfast on any given day.

I have discovered some blogs that strike a chord within me and I read them with great interest. I hope the Deco-Blog will strike a similar chord or two with readers at some stage.