Archives for category: praxis
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playing tag

Mar 1, 2006 //

Today I took my first steps towards cross-media publishing. During my last years at kodak.com, I was constantly discussing XML and how it could be used to facilitate the production of websites. But I never actually worked with the nitty gritty: tagging content and creating XLS files. Now however, I’m taking my tentative first steps towards the intimidating and immensely powerful world of XML.

Part of my interest is the cross-media (and by media I mean distribution media) possibilities that XML holds. Done properly you can generate printed collateral, web content, cell phone content, PSP content, etc. — all from the same core file. It holds a lot of interesting possibilities that have some terrific applications for extending the written word.

Anyway, today I sat down with Adobe InDesign and tagged up a school of printing publication. The next step will be to build the conversion files (XLS and DTD) for it and see if it can be churned into HTML. Once that???s set then it???s a matter of cranking out the right CSS and pulling the entire thing together. (Hmmm??? I know that last paragraph just lost about half of my readers??? sorry mom).

Suggestions on good XML resources are always welcome! And now it’s back to researching material for my classes and perhaps getting a little writing on GooglePrint done.

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Categories praxis

mmm… cookie

Feb 27, 2006 //

Cookie and my RIT application

Cookies always taste better after turning in application packets! Its official. My RIT packet is in. Now I can really start to focus on the next quarter and teaching.

In other news I continue to be amazed by my megapixel camera phone. The last few pictures have come directly off of that.

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Categories personal, photo, praxis

thanks on the feedback

Feb 22, 2006 //

I’m still getting used to Wordpad’s ins and outs. So I appologize that there’s a bit of lag in your comments getting up. That should be fixed now.

I will be discussing Meme theory as well. Which reminds me that I really need to read Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene in particular.

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Categories personal, praxis

need some help

Feb 20, 2006 //

As part of my Data Driven Print class, I want to present some models of how ideas spread through communities. One of the ones I wish to address is Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point. If this was a graduate class, or perhaps I was at a different school, I’d probably make the entire class read the book. However, that isn’t a current option.

I seem to remember that around 2000/2001, as the book was beginning to gain popularity, a business magazine published an article, possibly by Gladwell, that encapsulated the core concepts of the book. This is an article that I’d really like to use. The problem is I have no idea where it appeared. It might have been in Fast Company. But I’m not sure.

So, I turn to you, gentle blog reader. If anyone out there has any ideas where it might have appeared can you let me know. Just drop me a comment. I’ll be your adoring fan for ever!

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ode to printing

Feb 17, 2006 //

I have to confess to often being in complete awe of imaging technology. Joel Snyder, my photo theory professor at Chicago, once remarked that no matter how many times he’s seen it, he’s still amazed watching the latent image emerge on exposed photographic paper that is placed in developer. Having spent a bit of time in a darkroom, I understand that uncanny reaction.

I often experience a similar feeling when I watch a press at work. Such was the case when I stopped by RIT’s Printing Applications Lab today to watch a class project being run on the Goss Web Press. It’s strangely breathtaking to observe an image appear, color-by-color, on a web of paper flowing at breakneck speeds through a press. Faster than the eye can see, for this press operates at a speed of multiple feet per second, each layer of ink — black, cyan, magenta, yellow — is applied, in perfect registration, as the paper flows from tower to tower. The paper then disappears into a drying unit and then emerges and is immediately folded and cut.

The press itself is far to large for me to take a picture of. I did manage these two shots using my cellphone. The first is of the web passing out of the magenta tower (no relation to Stephen King’s famed Dark Tower). The second is of the end result — folded signatures — emerging from the press.

Photos of the Web Press

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Categories personal, photo, praxis
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