August 31, 2011
Long time no blog. Maybe it’s time for me to break out the feather duster and get this place running again. Maybe I have no idea what to do with this blog anymore. Maybe I should scrap the whole thing and start from scratch.
November 6, 2010
Ayn Rand blamed the legend of Robin Hood for much of what ails America.
From Atlas Shrugged:
“[Robin Hood] is not remembered as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor. He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity.”
The passage goes on to say, “Until men learn that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the most contemptible, there will be no justice on earth and no way for mankind to survive.”
Personally, I think Rand is wrong. Much of Atlas Shrugged equates the ability to produce with virtue. The wealthy from whom Robin Hood stole were wealthy simply by virtue of their birth, not through any ability to produce. In fact, the real production at this time was done by the poor themselves, who were usually serfs or even slaves. They were poor by virtue of their birth and had no avenue for upward economic mobility.
I think the real problem with this country is not that too many people buy into the Robin Hood philosophy, but that too many people have bought into Gordon Gekko philosophy, that greed is good. Like the nobility in Robin Hood, too many are content to let the peasants starve to death. It’s easy to blame poverty on the poor. But imagine what the world might be like if we valued how much we gave instead of how much we had? Imagine if we were more like a gift economy.
September 15, 2010
Wondering what sort of festivities will be going on at Can’t Stop the Space Pirates? I’ve made a clickable version of the schedule that we will be handing out with the programs. Check it out here.
August 15, 2010
Last year I made some bookmarks for Can’t Stop the Serenity. They seemed to go over well, (we sold over 60 of them) so I’ve made a new set for this year. I also made a set for Whedonfest. You can see both sets below. Whedonfest is already over, but you can get the Can’t Stop the Serenity and Can’t Stop the Space Pirates bookmarks at CSTS on September 19th, 2010.
August 13, 2010
As part of my internship with SDB Inc, I got to build my first web site in ASP. The site is for SDB’s annual charity golf tournament befitting the Disabled American Veterans of Arizona.
Since I didn’t know anything about ASP, this was a learning experience. The site is pretty simple, but it was not without challenges. It features a registration form using an ASP FormMail script, and column heights that are equalized with a bit of JavaScript. Some pages (after registration) even display different headers depending on which donation package the user selected. Not mind blowing, but a big leap in my web design knowledge.
August 6, 2010
I have been a terrible blogger. My last post was 5 months ago, and I have been so derelict that I didn’t even bother to a write up about the new theme. So I apologize to the 3 or so people who might actually visit this site from time to time. Now, let’s raise our glasses to getting back on track.
Last semester I didn’t post any of my school projects, so let me start by doing so now. In “Graphic Design 1″ I had an assignment to create a concert poster. The requirements of the assignment were to create the poster according to design specs for a local venue, and promote a band that could theoretically play at said venue. I just had to go with one of my favorite bands ever, Flight of the Conchords.
This posed some interesting challenges. On day one I emailed all of the larger venues in the Phoenix area asking if they had any specs for their posters. Not a single one of them responded. A fellow student had managed to reach someone at Cricket Wireless Pavilion only to find out that they have no real set rules. I wanted to use Dodge Theatre, since Flight of the Conchords has actually played there in the past. Since Dodge Theatre and Cricket Wireless are both managed by Live Nation I assumed that they would have the same requirements.
I was able to find a vector of the Dodge logo online. I only had to add the word “theatre” to recreate the Dodge Theatre logo. I found a typeface called Dodger which is a close approximation of the Dodge font. I had originally thought of doing something rather art nouveau, but found it very difficult to achieve that style effectively. (I aim to keep at it, but it could take years of practice.) Instead I went with something more Art Deco looking to go with the robot theme. For the display text I chose a font called fat free, which comes in an outline version and a solid version. I layered the two, outline over solid to make it look sort of hand drawn, like many Conchords posters. Fat free Solid also reads fairly easy, so I used that for the other text on the page.
March 7, 2010
Man did I fall behind. New theme for this week is fruits and vegetables.
© 2009 E.R. Ellsworth
