Twitter!

As is probably evident, I am not keeping up with this here blog. But I did get a public twitter account, so I will post all the terribly exciting things in my life there. SO all you people who want more of my life in your life, may I direct you to:

http://twitter.com/#!/mousereeve

and also,

http://mousereeve.com/

Place Value Visualizer

Remeber these?

Hint: this one post, and this other one

Well, I made a (somewhat) usable version on my website, that lets you flip through different functions, constants, base sytems, and place values.

Still a little buggy, but nonetheless:
http://mousereeve.com/placevalues/

Photodump

It's been a while since I've uploaded the photos from my camera. A sampling of the odds and ends:

My birthday cake. That was a long time ago.

The scrabbible.

An early and somewhat unexciting experiment with safety pin-based wearable electronics.

I.. honestly have no memory of this.

Oh now this one. This is just one photo in a huge set that documents how sketchy looking the rout to a basement basketball court below one of the campus dorms is. I always felt like I was breaking in when I went down there.

My prized collection of containers laid out.

A dress that needs to be refitted made from an XXL Battlestar Galactica shirt.

The fate of my last phone.

It's Summer!

Undeciphered, Asemic, and Otherwise Awesome Documents

I've expended a great deal of energy finding copies of books with made up, encoded, or asemic writing; more than seems proper. Hopefully by compiling the documents here, I can make it a little easier for everyone else.

Most files are already available online as PDFs, so I've just linked to those, and others I compiled and put on my google docs account for download. They are roughly in order of how much I mentally categorize them in with the Voynich Manuscript. Let me know if anything is wrong, missing, broken, or otherwise problematic.

The Voynich Manuscript
This is the first document that caught my interest; it was discovered in 1912 by a book dealer, Wilfrid Voynich, and consists of over two hundred pages of indecipherable (and quite possibly asemic) text and images. There is plenty more information about the document all over the internet.

Voynich Manuscript (pdf, 56.2MB), originally found here.

Spurious or unverified translations have been proposed by William Newbold, Leo Levitov, John Stojko, Joseph Feely, P. Han, Claude Martin, Richard Rogers, and James E. Finn. There are others, but these are the ones I could tie to specific documents.

Codex Seraphinianus

A friend introduced me to this one - it is a more recent (late 1970s, early 1980s) document. It is similar to Voynich in the sense that it records an imaginary world in an invented language and script, but tidier, more organized, and more accessible to the modern reader. Rumor has it that the page numbering system is base 21.

Codex Seraphinianus (53.6MB), also available for copious sums of money.

The Rohonc Codex
The Rohonc (or Rohonczi) Codex is a Hungarian document of mysterious origins and content. It is thought to be written in some sort of proto-Hungarian language, or, more commonly, a hoax of a proto-Hungarian language, rather than an invented world. Nonetheless, as far as I can tell, no one is entirely certain.

Rohonc Codex (28.5MB), compiled from GIFs of each page.

Fair warning, I suspect that a few pages may be missing from my PDF (and, possibly, the original GIFs).

The Dresden Codex

This is a pre-Columbian Mayan codex, and the most complete of the four remaining American documents. While it isn't incomprehensible, fantastical, or asemic, it is beautiful and historical. The Mayans (and, for that matter, all the pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations) are fascinating, technologically advanced, and not given half as much consideration as they should in world history classes. The Dresden Codex is, apparently, an almanac full of highly accurate astronomical information. 

Dresden Codex (100.4MB)

The codex is hosted by FAMSI (Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc.), along with the Madrid (48.8MB), Paris (2.9MB), and Grolier (1.5MB) Codices.

Zr + 4HCl → ZrCl₄ + 2H₂ 
U + 3F₂ → UF₆

Roberto Altmann, a Cuban Lettriste, made this beautiful comic around 1970. It is 13 pages long. That is pretty much all that I know. I assume the dialog is asemic, but don't quote me on that.

Zr + 4HCl → ZrCl₄ + 2H₂ / U + 3F₂ → UF₆ (22MB), compiled from JPG scans of each page.

Steganographia
I am reluctant to open the Grimoires and Esoteric box because 1) it isn't really all that relevant, 2) there is just way too much out there, and 3) and Joseph H. Peterson has already made a wonderful online catalog so there isn't much point in me doing it as well, but I'll include Johannes Trithemius' Steganographia here because it is, as the name suggests, steganography.

Steganographia (201KB), an html/text version is here.

Fair warning, it's in Latin. Sorry. It may be more interesting to look at the encrypted content than the original document. Ask google.


There are, of course, plenty more documents that I don't know about or can't find enough information on. But hopefully this can remedied.

More With the Roller Derby

KimPending Doom, jamming for the Taco Kickers:

Backgrounds are cruel, illustrator is beautiful.
Based on a photo by Nicolas Charest, at the Taco Kicker's vs. Eves of Destruction bout in Victoria, CA.

Metrix Create: Space, Maker Faire, And Other Places with People

I made chalk! Specifically, yellow chalk swirled with red at Metrix Create: Space in Capitol Hill. I don't have a photo of said chalk, which is probably for the best, because the yellow came out a bit.. vomit-y. Metrix, on the other hand, does not remind me of bloody vomit at all. If you are in Seattle, you should check it out; I am pretty enamored of it. They even sold me conductive thread!

Here is a picture of someone else's chalk looking really awesome as someone adds another drop of food coloring. I have no idea why the dye spreads out like this, but it looks beautiful and fractal-y.

Next up in my list of gathering places for interesting people making interesting things is the Bay Area Maker Faire, which is happening this weekend.

I am excited.

And I lied, there are no other places with people in this post. Just Metrix and Maker Faire. But they are wonderful enough to make up for it.

Random Sketch: Jammer

I am going to pretend that the scene after this one is of scoring points rather than getting hit.

And also I am lousy at backgrounds.

Sketched off a photo taken by Don Osborn Photography at the Eves of Destruction vs. Taco Kickers bout.

Domain

If things (and by things I mean links on this blog) are acting oddly (and by oddly I mean not working), it's probably because I have a domain now!

This will be really exciting when it starts working.

When it does, you can find me at... drumroll...

http://www.mousereeve.com/

My own domain! It's almost like I'm famous! Now all I need is a wikipedia entry.

Reverse Steampunk

I am convinced that this is the innovation that will make me rich and famous: Reverse Steampunk. It's genius.

Instead of re-contextualizing modern technology in a Victorian context, Reverse Steampunk re-contextualizes Victorian technology in a modern context.

Imagine the possibilities:

• A typewriter designed to look like a computer
• A cellphone that actually only does morse code
• A horse drawn carriage disguised as a car
• An iPod that functions as a music box
• An iPad frame holding a notebook
• A ballpoint pen that has to be dipped in an ink well

I am going to go gut my laptop now. I suggest you do the same. The possibilities are endless, and endlessly awesome.

Negative Bases

I am too busy right now for any really exciting revelations, so instead I will post a visualization of binary, negabinary, trinary, and negatrinary. For binary, black=1 and white=0, while in trinary black=2, grey=1, and white=0.

I love how the order of the digits reverses in the second column of the trinary systems.
Now I am going to go back to being way busy.

Robot Mermaid is a Lady

I accept that this probably makes no sense. But robot mermaid is a lady. Not a fish man. She is too polite to zap you with her deathray eyes for calling her a fish man, but it hurts her. Deep inside. 

Taken from my electrical engineering notes.

Apocalypse Pie

I recently scanned some pages from my diary/sketchbook, and found this sketch from a pre-NaNoWriMo planning session.

In short, if you were wondering what happens when I read a stack of Tank Girl comics and then re-watch the movie while thinking about story ideas, now you know (click to enlarge):

The general premise was that Nellie P. decides one day that the apocalypse has happened (whether or not anyone else thinks so), and that the only reasonable response is to open a traveling pie shop. Violence and deliciousness ensues. It was a pretty fun story to write.

I ended up vector-ifying it, because I love my wacom pen. I'm not sure if it is an improvement on the sketch or not, but nonetheless (click to enlarge):

Mi Hermana

So my sister is pretty great. She has recently come back to the US after 13 months traveling around South America, and picked up jewelry-making skills along the way. It's beautiful stuff, and all on etsy:

Taos Stagecoach earring made from vintage belt bits:

Onyx Mermaid earrings:

Gypsy Rose earrings:

There are even more on her etsy site. I recommend it.

The Fractal Bear Meets D&D

DracoDei has turned Mandelbrot the Fractal Bear ...

...into a monster in Dungeons and Dragons. It's really well thought out, too. I have never played the game in my life, but I found it a fun read nonetheless.

So go take a look.