mood board

Writing for Mental Floss, Miss Cellania introduces us to some clever alternatives to the boilerplate, filler text “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.” Sort of like the classic Kant-Generator, my favourite of the bunch is the Samuel L Ipsum. Unlike the other engines, however, that return gibberish based on a certain genre, the sample text that is delivered are actual blocks of dialogue spoken by the characters Mister Jackson has portrayed:

Do you see any Teletubbies in here?  Do you see a slender plastic tag clipped to my shirt with my name printed on it?  Do you see a little Asian child with a blank expression on his face sitting outside on a mechanical helicopter that shakes when you put quarters in it?  No?  Well, that's what you see at a toy store. And you must think you're in a toy store, because you're here shopping for an infant named Jeb.

And unlike the greeking that’s characterised the lorem ipsum (since it’s not even sensible Latin), one runs the risk of having readers focus on what the text says, rather than how the text-layout and type-speciment looks in the presentation.

hitch and bight

Laughing Squid features a splendidly executed teaching diagram of various knots and their application. The infographic, writ large at the link, is from the design studios of Fix and is called Tying the Knot. The expression “hanging on to the bitter end” and derivations like ‘til the bitter end is from rope tying terminology, referring to the working end of the rope, the length being worked and specifically secured to a bitt—the metal block on a pier. The opposite section of rope that’s not the anchor is called the standing end. I got the merit badge, I think, but I am not sure if I am the best visual learner when it comes to this skill and probably would need some hands-on instruction.

tres chic

The ever marvelous Nag on the Lake directs our attention to a brilliant assemblage of redesigned chicken coops with a Mid-Century Modern flair that are just as functional for their residents as they are stylish. The cosmopolitan ensemble of roost and scratch pictured is called ‘the Cocorico’ and was conceived by artist Maxime Evrard in protest to battery-farming conditions.  See more inspired coop couture creations at the link.

storefront or slate and shingle

Via the Browser, here’s one prognostication for the coming year regarding “distributed content” that’s a very good and quick study.

Already the publishing houses of the internet scuttle writing and reporting to select social networks, where their articles are handily propagated and garner much greater exposure in those wilds, rather than on their own tamer, manicured turf: their home page. The prediction is that news organisations and other forums will shed their own web pages entirely and only exist in that stream of consciousness. Sometimes hosting one’s own content does seem a little vainglorious or ungainly and unrefined, but—and even for all the flash and circulation—I imagine that it is still a better route to maintain some sense of place and ownership and pride for what one has made.

iconodule

Celebrated on the first Sunday of the Great Lent (1 March, this year), the Feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy celebrates the restoration of icons, holy images, to the Church, and the victory of the iconodules—those who venerate images, the iconophiles over the iconoclasts who considered the practise idolatry.

The service that takes place in churches on that day has come to present the defeat of heretical thinking in general but the mass remembers a historic event that took place in March of 843 when the icons were returned to the Hagia Sophia. Recursively, an icon was created to illustrate this auspicious event. I had always believed that the iconoclasm was an internal matter and one could easily imagine disputes arising, as they continue to do, over the sacramental nature of holy objects—whether they help the faithful to focus their attention or are vain distractions, but it seems that the division arose and sides were taken due in part—at least, to mounting outside pressures: with the rapid expansion of Islam—who were strongly against any human or divine imagery of any kind, the Church began to reassess its position. Did these Muslims, who were making inroads on Byzantine territory and even threatening Constantinople itself, have God’s favour because they had roundly rejected graven images? As above, the debate—and often violently continues—within and without.