blacklog

I found this cute low-res depiction of a spermatozoon in the tiny icon factory the other day. It seems to be a calm, pensive specimen that will probably never win the race to fertilize an ovum.

Along with many other icons in the tiny icon factory, this image reminds me of the Rorschach inkblot test, created by the Swiss Freudian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Hermann Rorschach in 1921. The image might not really represent anything other than itself, but we still manage to see other things in it.

When I looked at this icon for the first time, I also had access to the name it was given: sperm. With the help of this name, I can immediately see the cute little spermatozoon curling upwards like a seahorse, but if I stare long enough I wonder whether I see nothing at all. Do I actually believe that the 1×2 pixel rectangle hanging from the top right corner of its head is actually an eye?

Yes I do.

This mini-graph illustrates the missing nineteen days that complete one year of logging my sleep. I think I’m ready for a break from this.

I didn’t retain my dreams from last night. They must have been incredibly pleasant because I couldn’t get myself to wake up until it was almost late. I love to sleep and I love my dreams, even the disturbing ones that sometimes are called nightmares. They remind me of serialized comics: fantastic and incomplete.

One question that comes to my mind about all this is: When graphs are pretty, does it matter what they mean?

This graph illustrates my sleeping habits from September 4th, 2007 to August 16th, 2008. Days of the year run from left to right and hours of each day run bottom-up.

The blue stripe represents from 1 am to 9 am every day, eight nice normal hours of sleep. The chaotic oscillation rendered in black represents reality. I guess this black area is approximately equal to the area outlined by the blue stripe, which must mean I’m not doing so bad. Or am I?

When I look at measured data I have a fascination for the singular occurences rather than the trends. The things that only happen once, like that day I woke up really late or that day I went to bed really early. I can’t claim to remember what was going on back then -after all, I can only manage to retain the last 10 minutes in my head these days- but I’m certain those must have been real highlights of my MIT grad life.

We just created channels in Vimeo for oGFx and E15:

• http://www.vimeo.com/ogfx
• http://www.vimeo.com/e15

It helps a lot to understand what these things are about when you look at them in motion.

Once upon a time there was a place called the PLW where many wonderful things had their home, like a large HP printer called MAEDA-BIG-WRATH.

Adhered to the principle of temperamental programming, MAEDA-BIG-WRATH did not work like she was supposed to. She often required users to perform complicated rituals, mostly to summon the goodwill of the ethernet faeries.

MAEDA-BIG-WRATH lived in a big closet where she remained mostly ignored, except for the ocassional times when a poster was needed to promote something. Always printing information, hardly printing things of beauty. She loved it when she didn’t had to print any date, name, diagram or description.

When I met MAEDA-BIG-WRATH I didn’t notice her loneliness at first. Then it took some time for her to follow my call when I finally approached her. If I had known we were meant for each other I would have made her heads dance across the length of the glossy paper rolls every week, turning their mechanical four color motion motion into an endless stream of high heels, flowers, buildings, cocktails, robots, trucks, guns and bikinis. But now I am gone, and life will never be what it was when I could talk to MAEDA-BIG-WRATH in the privacy of that closet.

Like lost humans in the planet of the apes, Kyle and I were the only ones left to witness the end of the PLW.