{
"type": "entry",
"author": {
"name": "Jared White",
"url": "https://jaredwhite.com/",
"photo": null
},
"url": "https://jaredwhite.com/articles/you-need-a-portfolio",
"published": "2024-09-25T09:08:27-07:00",
"content": {
"html": "<img alt=\"\" src=\"https://res.cloudinary.com/mariposta/image/upload/w_1200,c_limit,q_65/art-gallery.jpg\" /><h2>Somewhere along the way to becoming Extremely Online, we\u2019ve lost the art of curation. It\u2019s time to reclaim our artistic truths.</h2>\n\n<p>On occasion, truth be told, I\u2019m not so swift on the uptake. You see, it <em>finally</em> came to me as I sat musing on the nature of the work I\u2019ve been focusing on a great deal this year across several unrelated disciplines. When I list out these efforts all together, you\u2019ll immediately spot the pattern\u2014hence my sudden <em>smack-that-forehead</em> moment of epiphany:</p>\n\n<ul><li><a href=\"https://theinternet.review/\">The Internet Review</a>, my rebooted & coalesced blog combining over 25 years of writing on tech topics</li>\n <li><a href=\"https://yarred.bandcamp.com/album/subterranean\">Subterranean</a>, my album release of newly-freshened electronic music compositions spanning 20 years</li>\n <li><strong>Essential Life Photography</strong> (currently in the works!), my curated portfolio of photographs taken over the past seven years I\u2019ve lived in Oregon.</li>\n</ul><p>Obvious, isn\u2019t it? And yet these were all <em>separate</em> efforts which I didn\u2019t give much thought to in terms of their conceptual <em>interconnectedness</em>\u2026<strong>until now!</strong></p>\n\n<p>If I might put a theme on it, I could call it <strong>Rebel Without a Timeline</strong>. In all of these cases (perhaps least obvious for The Internet Review which is still primarily a blog format), the primordial desire is to break out of the confines of the \u201creverse-chronological timeline\u201d and showcase work which encompasses months, years, and even decades of effort in a curated fashion. Fact is the Internet isn\u2019t so good at that\u2014not any more at least. The validity of the \u201cdeath of the homepage\u201d narrative has been hotly contested for a long time, and I don\u2019t wish to litigate that here, but it\u2019s hard to deny that the <em>primary format</em> by which people consume content online is\u2014as Netscape once established\u2014<strong>What\u2019s New</strong>.</p>\n\n<p>No matter which social media platform you use, no matter which email newsletters you subscribe to, no matter how you choose to bookmark and follow creators\u2014it\u2019s all about <strong>What\u2019s New</strong>. Even algorithmic timelines which are somewhat non-linear nearly always favor recency. You might see a post from a day or two ago, but you certainly won\u2019t see something from months or years ago\u2014unless that\u2019s been intentionally shared by an individual. <em>Maybe</em> something older will surface in a \u201crelated\u201d section (most notably on YouTube), but it\u2019s an exception to the rule.</p>\n\n<h3>Streams Makes Sense, But They\u2019re Also Missing Something</h3>\n\n<p>Content streams, feeds, whatever you want to call them\u2014they make sense. They really do. There\u2019s a reason that\u2019s what publishing on the Internet is built around, by and large.</p>\n\n<p>But streams miss out on a vital aspect of creativity. Streams are lacking in <em>context</em>. Streams are lacking in <em>legacy</em>. And streams are lacking in <em>relationships</em> between disparate pieces of content.</p>\n\n<p>When you visit an art gallery, <strong>you\u2019re participating in multiple layers of experience</strong>. The most basic and obvious layer is when you\u2019re looking at one piece of art at a time, which I might call <em>singular attention</em>. This painting. That sculpture. This photograph. That projection.</p>\n\n<p>But beyond that, you\u2019re experiencing the layer of <em>comparison</em>. This painting <strong>as compared to</strong> that sculpture <strong>as compared to</strong> this photography <strong>as compared to</strong> that projection.</p>\n\n<p>But at a higher level still is the layer of <em>compilation</em>. All of the art in the gallery has been compiled together into an exhibit. And the exhibit itself could be considered a form of art. Why did the curator choose these pieces, and not other pieces? Why are they placed where they are placed? What is the larger story being told through this collection of created artifacts?</p>\n\n<p>The unfortunately reality of online streams is that the layer of comparison is completely random, and the layer of compilation is missing entirely. When you open Mastodon, or Threads, or YouTube, or whatever: sure, you\u2019re seeing a bunch of different works compiled together, but <em>nobody is doing the compiling</em>. It\u2019s either the <strong>almighty algorithm</strong>, or <strong>mere recency</strong> based on who you follow. That\u2019s it. Thus there\u2019s no meaning to the compilation. There\u2019s no \u201creason\u201d I\u2019m seeing this post next to that post. Sometimes there is humor to be found in the accidental contrast\u2014people may post screenshots of how two posts next to each other afforded a moment of happenstantial comedy. But it was never <em>designed</em> to be that way.</p>\n\n<h3>What\u2019s Worth Curating?</h3>\n\n<p>It could be argued that few posts on social media would even ever rise to the level of warranting curation in a particular gallery-style collection in the first place. And that\u2019s fair. But some of what we post on social media <em>is</em> art, straight up. We post our paintings, our songs, our sculptures, our knitted sweaters, our poems, our prose essays, our dance moves, and on and on and on. Yet who is compiling any of this art? How can we compare things in a way which brings a higher sense of meaning?</p>\n\n<p>This <em>loss of meaning</em>, <em>loss of fidelity</em> in the experience of \u201cart in digital spaces\u201d has been weighing on me. <strong>A lot.</strong> I think it may be subconsciously contributing to my growing unease that simply \u201cbeing very online\u201d is rather bad for my mental health. Even while I\u2019m compelled to <em>post, post, post</em> my creative works online, I often lack the satisfaction I think I will get out of it.</p>\n\n<p><strong>On social media, we\u2019re all just shouting in the wind.</strong></p>\n\n<p>And so I <em>crave</em> a more curated experience, and in many cases a more \u201cmeatspace\u201d experience. I find myself going out to listen to live music more often. I find myself wanting to visit art galleries and museums IRL. I find myself wanting to attend meetups in which I can converse with just a few people about <strong>real ideas which make sense in the real world</strong>.</p>\n\n<p>But what can we do, beyond all that, to make our online experiences of art better?</p>\n\n<p>As a starting point, I think we can attempt to reorient ourselves around the concept of the <strong>portfolio</strong>.</p>\n\n<h3>A Portfolio is a Gallery of One</h3>\n\n<p>Some forms of art lend themselves to portfolio-making better than others. For example, an album is essentially a portfolio of music from a particular epoch. A non-fiction book could be considered a portfolio of related essays.</p>\n\n<p>But no matter what kind of art you create, <strong>you need a portfolio</strong>. (And probably several at least!) This is what I\u2019m beginning to realize more and more as I evaluate all of the different projects I\u2019m involved in. The \u201creverse-chron\u201d format of blogs and social media is beginning to <strong>crush my spirit</strong>, and I desperately want to start focusing on how I can surface various collections of thematically-similar creations.</p>\n\n<p><strong>First of all, you\u2019ll almost certainly need a professional website.</strong> Your Instagram profile is not a photography portfolio. Your \u201ctop posts\u201d category on your blog is not a writing portfolio. And your Bandcamp homepage is not a musical portfolio.</p>\n\n<p>Secondly, you\u2019ll need to start diving into the different themes of your work over the years. You might need to set aside some time to review past work and jot down ideas of what you like or don\u2019t like about different pieces (as well as what stand out in terms of \u201ckeywords\u201d). Sure, maybe you\u2019ve taken lots of photos of flowers over the years, but what <em>kinds</em> of flowers? Are there certain colors you gravitate to? Are there certain angles? Certain photographic styles? Certain species? Expand your thought processes beyond the rote work which goes into each piece, and start to approach your work as if <em>you</em> were the curator of a gallery. How might you put an exhibit together? What would it <em>say</em>? What would it <em>mean</em>? Which conscious decisions would you make as you separate the wheat from the chaff? How might you be showcased <strong>as an artist</strong>?</p>\n\n<p>One aspect of this I sometimes think about is how the \u201cstream\u201d often prompts us to want to put out only \u201cpretty\u201d art. Because if you were to post a single artwork which is \u201cugly\u201d in some confrontational or countercultural or aesthetic way, it might just get \u201crejected\u201d in the constant flow of online content which tends to promote conformity to norms. Case in point: if I simply mentioned \u201cthe Instagram look\u201d in photography, you\u2019d know <em>exactly</em> what I\u2019m talking about\u2026</p>\n\n<p>But in a curated collection, you could put a pretty piece and an ugly piece side-by-side\u2014the <em>contrast</em> between the two being of primary importance. Some of Phil Collins\u2019 solo albums come to mind here: I noticed the tracklist often ping-pongs between a \u201chit single\u201d which is palatable to the masses, and a \u201cweird song\u201d which nobody would ever suggest is Top 10 Radio material. In a world where a Phil Collins is just posting clips of singles on TikTok or whatever, I\u2019m not sure the \u201cweird songs\u201d would land all that often. When I listen to some modern albums where every song sort of just sounds the same and nothing stands out in any particular way, <strong>I wonder if this sort of dynamic is at play</strong>.</p>\n\n<p>So I\u2019d recommend being a bit bold in your portfolio selection process. I\u2019m just starting this process with my photography, so I\u2019m excited to see what kind of contrast I can bring out, which sorts of <em>non-sequiturs</em> I can put on display. I fear my own work has trended \u201cpretty\u201d over the years because I\u2019m always thinking of what might land on social media, rather than what I could say that\u2019s provocative or even distasteful. <strong>It\u2019ll be a challenge certainly, and quite probably inform how I approach my craft going forward.</strong></p>\n\n<h3>Outatime</h3>\n\n<p>One of the enduring tropes of sci-fi stories is the <em>fish-out-of-water</em> sensation of time travel. I think we love time travel scenarios because it wreaks havoc on our sense of linear progression. We typically live our lives with a this, then this, then this, then this, then this mindset. Once you time travel, you have to completely reorient yourself around a new narrative of what <em>was</em> true, what <em>is</em> true now, and what <em>might be</em> true tomorrow.</p>\n\n<p>A portfolio is in essence a demonstration of artistic time travel. On my new album <a href=\"https://yarred.bandcamp.com/album/subterranean\">Subterranean</a>, that is doubly true, as the origin point for the compositions stem from 2004, 2008, and 2015\u2014with new elements and arrangements mixed in across the last several years. I can\u2019t think of any other music project I\u2019ve ever worked on which \u201cspanned decades\u201d quite like this, and it was <strong>enormously fun</strong>. I almost lament having to start on my next album project composing in a typical linear fashion. Perhaps I\u2019ve been spoiled by <a href=\"https://jaredwhite.com/about#musician\">my past life performing in folk and classical music settings</a> where you\u2019re always re-interpreting compositions and styles from quite literally hundreds of years ago. There\u2019s a sublime humanist joy to that I can\u2019t quite capture anywhere else.</p>\n\n<p>But I digress. My takeaway here is for you to <strong>enjoy some time travel of your own</strong>. Get familiar once more with your older work, with additional styles and ideas you might have once pursued. Look for points of contrast between styles, eras, and moods. See what sorts of stories you might tell with your work when these contrasting elements come together in a new and unique fashion. Publish an artistic experience online that\u2019s more than simply fuel for the social media streams. And then repeat this process from time to time, forging new <em>compilations</em> as your career progresses.</p>\n\n<p>The art of curation has in many ways been lost to those of us who are Extremely Online\u2122. <strong>We need to reclaim our artistic truths, and thereby reclaim our creative power.</strong></p>\n\n<p><br /></p>\n\n<p><em>Photo credit: <a href=\"https://unsplash.com/photos/person-looking-at-painting-jqh0GEvuNBY?utm_content=creditShareLink&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash\">Antenna on Unsplash</a></em></p>\n\n\n\n <br /><p>\n \n <a href=\"https://jaredwhite.com/tag/lifehacks\">#lifehacks</a>\n \n <a href=\"https://jaredwhite.com/tag/creativity\">#creativity</a>\n \n </p>",
"text": "Somewhere along the way to becoming Extremely Online, we\u2019ve lost the art of curation. It\u2019s time to reclaim our artistic truths.\n\nOn occasion, truth be told, I\u2019m not so swift on the uptake. You see, it finally came to me as I sat musing on the nature of the work I\u2019ve been focusing on a great deal this year across several unrelated disciplines. When I list out these efforts all together, you\u2019ll immediately spot the pattern\u2014hence my sudden smack-that-forehead moment of epiphany:\n\nThe Internet Review, my rebooted & coalesced blog combining over 25 years of writing on tech topics\n Subterranean, my album release of newly-freshened electronic music compositions spanning 20 years\n Essential Life Photography (currently in the works!), my curated portfolio of photographs taken over the past seven years I\u2019ve lived in Oregon.\nObvious, isn\u2019t it? And yet these were all separate efforts which I didn\u2019t give much thought to in terms of their conceptual interconnectedness\u2026until now!\n\nIf I might put a theme on it, I could call it Rebel Without a Timeline. In all of these cases (perhaps least obvious for The Internet Review which is still primarily a blog format), the primordial desire is to break out of the confines of the \u201creverse-chronological timeline\u201d and showcase work which encompasses months, years, and even decades of effort in a curated fashion. Fact is the Internet isn\u2019t so good at that\u2014not any more at least. The validity of the \u201cdeath of the homepage\u201d narrative has been hotly contested for a long time, and I don\u2019t wish to litigate that here, but it\u2019s hard to deny that the primary format by which people consume content online is\u2014as Netscape once established\u2014What\u2019s New.\n\nNo matter which social media platform you use, no matter which email newsletters you subscribe to, no matter how you choose to bookmark and follow creators\u2014it\u2019s all about What\u2019s New. Even algorithmic timelines which are somewhat non-linear nearly always favor recency. You might see a post from a day or two ago, but you certainly won\u2019t see something from months or years ago\u2014unless that\u2019s been intentionally shared by an individual. Maybe something older will surface in a \u201crelated\u201d section (most notably on YouTube), but it\u2019s an exception to the rule.\n\nStreams Makes Sense, But They\u2019re Also Missing Something\n\nContent streams, feeds, whatever you want to call them\u2014they make sense. They really do. There\u2019s a reason that\u2019s what publishing on the Internet is built around, by and large.\n\nBut streams miss out on a vital aspect of creativity. Streams are lacking in context. Streams are lacking in legacy. And streams are lacking in relationships between disparate pieces of content.\n\nWhen you visit an art gallery, you\u2019re participating in multiple layers of experience. The most basic and obvious layer is when you\u2019re looking at one piece of art at a time, which I might call singular attention. This painting. That sculpture. This photograph. That projection.\n\nBut beyond that, you\u2019re experiencing the layer of comparison. This painting as compared to that sculpture as compared to this photography as compared to that projection.\n\nBut at a higher level still is the layer of compilation. All of the art in the gallery has been compiled together into an exhibit. And the exhibit itself could be considered a form of art. Why did the curator choose these pieces, and not other pieces? Why are they placed where they are placed? What is the larger story being told through this collection of created artifacts?\n\nThe unfortunately reality of online streams is that the layer of comparison is completely random, and the layer of compilation is missing entirely. When you open Mastodon, or Threads, or YouTube, or whatever: sure, you\u2019re seeing a bunch of different works compiled together, but nobody is doing the compiling. It\u2019s either the almighty algorithm, or mere recency based on who you follow. That\u2019s it. Thus there\u2019s no meaning to the compilation. There\u2019s no \u201creason\u201d I\u2019m seeing this post next to that post. Sometimes there is humor to be found in the accidental contrast\u2014people may post screenshots of how two posts next to each other afforded a moment of happenstantial comedy. But it was never designed to be that way.\n\nWhat\u2019s Worth Curating?\n\nIt could be argued that few posts on social media would even ever rise to the level of warranting curation in a particular gallery-style collection in the first place. And that\u2019s fair. But some of what we post on social media is art, straight up. We post our paintings, our songs, our sculptures, our knitted sweaters, our poems, our prose essays, our dance moves, and on and on and on. Yet who is compiling any of this art? How can we compare things in a way which brings a higher sense of meaning?\n\nThis loss of meaning, loss of fidelity in the experience of \u201cart in digital spaces\u201d has been weighing on me. A lot. I think it may be subconsciously contributing to my growing unease that simply \u201cbeing very online\u201d is rather bad for my mental health. Even while I\u2019m compelled to post, post, post my creative works online, I often lack the satisfaction I think I will get out of it.\n\nOn social media, we\u2019re all just shouting in the wind.\n\nAnd so I crave a more curated experience, and in many cases a more \u201cmeatspace\u201d experience. I find myself going out to listen to live music more often. I find myself wanting to visit art galleries and museums IRL. I find myself wanting to attend meetups in which I can converse with just a few people about real ideas which make sense in the real world.\n\nBut what can we do, beyond all that, to make our online experiences of art better?\n\nAs a starting point, I think we can attempt to reorient ourselves around the concept of the portfolio.\n\nA Portfolio is a Gallery of One\n\nSome forms of art lend themselves to portfolio-making better than others. For example, an album is essentially a portfolio of music from a particular epoch. A non-fiction book could be considered a portfolio of related essays.\n\nBut no matter what kind of art you create, you need a portfolio. (And probably several at least!) This is what I\u2019m beginning to realize more and more as I evaluate all of the different projects I\u2019m involved in. The \u201creverse-chron\u201d format of blogs and social media is beginning to crush my spirit, and I desperately want to start focusing on how I can surface various collections of thematically-similar creations.\n\nFirst of all, you\u2019ll almost certainly need a professional website. Your Instagram profile is not a photography portfolio. Your \u201ctop posts\u201d category on your blog is not a writing portfolio. And your Bandcamp homepage is not a musical portfolio.\n\nSecondly, you\u2019ll need to start diving into the different themes of your work over the years. You might need to set aside some time to review past work and jot down ideas of what you like or don\u2019t like about different pieces (as well as what stand out in terms of \u201ckeywords\u201d). Sure, maybe you\u2019ve taken lots of photos of flowers over the years, but what kinds of flowers? Are there certain colors you gravitate to? Are there certain angles? Certain photographic styles? Certain species? Expand your thought processes beyond the rote work which goes into each piece, and start to approach your work as if you were the curator of a gallery. How might you put an exhibit together? What would it say? What would it mean? Which conscious decisions would you make as you separate the wheat from the chaff? How might you be showcased as an artist?\n\nOne aspect of this I sometimes think about is how the \u201cstream\u201d often prompts us to want to put out only \u201cpretty\u201d art. Because if you were to post a single artwork which is \u201cugly\u201d in some confrontational or countercultural or aesthetic way, it might just get \u201crejected\u201d in the constant flow of online content which tends to promote conformity to norms. Case in point: if I simply mentioned \u201cthe Instagram look\u201d in photography, you\u2019d know exactly what I\u2019m talking about\u2026\n\nBut in a curated collection, you could put a pretty piece and an ugly piece side-by-side\u2014the contrast between the two being of primary importance. Some of Phil Collins\u2019 solo albums come to mind here: I noticed the tracklist often ping-pongs between a \u201chit single\u201d which is palatable to the masses, and a \u201cweird song\u201d which nobody would ever suggest is Top 10 Radio material. In a world where a Phil Collins is just posting clips of singles on TikTok or whatever, I\u2019m not sure the \u201cweird songs\u201d would land all that often. When I listen to some modern albums where every song sort of just sounds the same and nothing stands out in any particular way, I wonder if this sort of dynamic is at play.\n\nSo I\u2019d recommend being a bit bold in your portfolio selection process. I\u2019m just starting this process with my photography, so I\u2019m excited to see what kind of contrast I can bring out, which sorts of non-sequiturs I can put on display. I fear my own work has trended \u201cpretty\u201d over the years because I\u2019m always thinking of what might land on social media, rather than what I could say that\u2019s provocative or even distasteful. It\u2019ll be a challenge certainly, and quite probably inform how I approach my craft going forward.\n\nOutatime\n\nOne of the enduring tropes of sci-fi stories is the fish-out-of-water sensation of time travel. I think we love time travel scenarios because it wreaks havoc on our sense of linear progression. We typically live our lives with a this, then this, then this, then this, then this mindset. Once you time travel, you have to completely reorient yourself around a new narrative of what was true, what is true now, and what might be true tomorrow.\n\nA portfolio is in essence a demonstration of artistic time travel. On my new album Subterranean, that is doubly true, as the origin point for the compositions stem from 2004, 2008, and 2015\u2014with new elements and arrangements mixed in across the last several years. I can\u2019t think of any other music project I\u2019ve ever worked on which \u201cspanned decades\u201d quite like this, and it was enormously fun. I almost lament having to start on my next album project composing in a typical linear fashion. Perhaps I\u2019ve been spoiled by my past life performing in folk and classical music settings where you\u2019re always re-interpreting compositions and styles from quite literally hundreds of years ago. There\u2019s a sublime humanist joy to that I can\u2019t quite capture anywhere else.\n\nBut I digress. My takeaway here is for you to enjoy some time travel of your own. Get familiar once more with your older work, with additional styles and ideas you might have once pursued. Look for points of contrast between styles, eras, and moods. See what sorts of stories you might tell with your work when these contrasting elements come together in a new and unique fashion. Publish an artistic experience online that\u2019s more than simply fuel for the social media streams. And then repeat this process from time to time, forging new compilations as your career progresses.\n\nThe art of curation has in many ways been lost to those of us who are Extremely Online\u2122. We need to reclaim our artistic truths, and thereby reclaim our creative power.\n\n\n\n\nPhoto credit: Antenna on Unsplash\n\n\n\n \n\n \n #lifehacks\n \n #creativity"
},
"name": "You Need a Portfolio (and So Do I)",
"post-type": "article",
"_id": "42352740",
"_source": "2783"
}
I’m always trying to take pictures of the glorious hanging baskets of #flowers we have here in #Portland and surrounding towns all summer. But the photos never do them justice.
I finally got a good angle, thanks to my #NikonZfc and 40mm prime, and went with a bit of a Wes Anderson vibe in post. How’d I do? ☺️ #OregonExplored
{
"type": "entry",
"author": {
"name": "Jared White",
"url": "https://jaredwhite.com/",
"photo": null
},
"url": "https://jaredwhite.com/pictures/20240912/i-m-always-trying-to-take-pictures-of-the-glorious-hanging",
"published": "2024-09-12T10:26:57-07:00",
"content": {
"html": "<img alt=\"\" src=\"https://pxscdn.com/public/m/_v2/4580/586f75268-5004eb/53NN3qIEPRMf/zRH4bHEib0ZIKUjV0XryExlTTR7dh9bXsD0FY4qx.jpg\" /><p>I\u2019m always trying to take pictures of the glorious hanging baskets of <a href=\"https://jaredwhite.com/tag/flowers\">#flowers</a> we have here in <a href=\"https://jaredwhite.com/tag/portland\">#Portland</a> and surrounding towns all summer. But the photos never do them justice.</p>\n\n<p>I finally got a good angle, thanks to my <a href=\"https://jaredwhite.com/tag/nikonzfc\">#NikonZfc</a> and 40mm prime, and went with a bit of a Wes Anderson vibe in post. How\u2019d I do? \u263a\ufe0f <a href=\"https://jaredwhite.com/tag/oregonexplored\">#OregonExplored</a></p>",
"text": "I\u2019m always trying to take pictures of the glorious hanging baskets of #flowers we have here in #Portland and surrounding towns all summer. But the photos never do them justice.\n\nI finally got a good angle, thanks to my #NikonZfc and 40mm prime, and went with a bit of a Wes Anderson vibe in post. How\u2019d I do? \u263a\ufe0f #OregonExplored"
},
"post-type": "note",
"_id": "42352742",
"_source": "2783"
}
Any German speakers want to tell me if my instinct on this is correct?
"Ganz kleine Nachtmusik" is the name of a piece of music by Mozart that was just discovered. (He later titled a piece "Eine kleine Nachtmusik")
The English press about this is translating it as "Very little night music" which seems wrong? I feel like either "Quite small night music" or "Completely small night music" would be more accurate.
When does "ganz" change from "quite" to "completely"? Is it ambiguous here?
{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2024-09-20T22:29:45-07:00",
"url": "https://aaronparecki.com/2024/09/20/16/mozart",
"category": [
"music",
"german",
"language"
],
"content": {
"text": "Any German speakers want to tell me if my instinct on this is correct? \n\n\"Ganz kleine Nachtmusik\" is the name of a piece of music by Mozart that was just discovered. (He later titled a piece \"Eine kleine Nachtmusik\") \n\nThe English press about this is translating it as \"Very little night music\" which seems wrong? I feel like either \"Quite small night music\" or \"Completely small night music\" would be more accurate. \n\nWhen does \"ganz\" change from \"quite\" to \"completely\"? Is it ambiguous here?",
"html": "Any German speakers want to tell me if my instinct on this is correct? <br /><br />\"Ganz kleine Nachtmusik\" is the name of a piece of music by Mozart that was just discovered. (He later titled a piece \"Eine kleine Nachtmusik\") <br /><br />The English press about this is translating it as \"Very little night music\" which seems wrong? I feel like either \"Quite small night music\" or \"Completely small night music\" would be more accurate. <br /><br />When does \"ganz\" change from \"quite\" to \"completely\"? Is it ambiguous here?"
},
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Aaron Parecki",
"url": "https://aaronparecki.com/",
"photo": "https://aperture-media.p3k.io/aaronparecki.com/41061f9de825966faa22e9c42830e1d4a614a321213b4575b9488aa93f89817a.jpg"
},
"post-type": "note",
"_id": "42306226",
"_source": "16"
}
Can we have CC-NT licenses for no-training (ML/LLM, GenAI in general), just like we have CC-NC for non-commercial?
My previous post¹ reminded me that I’ve been creating, writing, inventing, and then sharing things with #CreativeCommons (CC) #licenses for a long time (I have to see if I can dig up my first use of CC licenses.)
I’ve used and recommended a variety of CC licenses for decades, e.g. * CC0 — for standards work, e.g. I drove and wrote up https://wiki.mozilla.org/Standards/licensing (with help from lawyers) * CC-BY — aforementioned blog post (and other snippets of #openSource) * CC-BY-NC — photos on Flickr (dozens of which have been used in publications²) * CC-SA — for CASSIS³, which I still consider experimental enough that I chose "share-alike" to deliberately slow its spread, and hopefully reduce mutations (while allowing ports of its functions to other languages)
So I have some idea of what I’m talking about.
There have been LOTS of discussions of the challenges, downsides, and disagreements with sweeping use of copyrighted content to train generated artificial intelligence AKA #genAI software and services, sometimes also called #machineLearning. The most common examples being Large Language Models AKA #LLM, but also models for generating images and video. Smart, intelligent, and well-intentioned people disagree on who has rights to do what, or even who should do what in this regard.
There have been many proposals for new standards, or updates to existing standards like robots.txt etc. but I have not really seen them make noticeable progress. There are also lots of techniques published that attempt to block the spiders and bots being used to crawl and collect content for GenAI, an arms race that ends up damaging well-established popular uses such as web search engines (or making it harder to build a new one).
The brilliant innovation of Creative Commons was to look at the use-cases and intentions of creators publishing on the web in the 2000s and capture them in a small handful of clear licenses with human readable summaries.
Creatives are clamoring for a simple way to opt-out of their publicly published content from being used to train GenAI. New Creative Commons licenses solve this.
This seems like an obvious thing to me. If you can write a license that forbids “commercial use”, then you should be able to write a license that forbids use in “training models”, which respectful / well-written crawlers should (hopefully) respect, in as much as they respect existing CC licenses.
I saw that Creative Commons published a position paper⁴ for for an IETF workshop on this topic, and it unfortunately in my opinion has an overly cautious and pessimistic (outright conservative one could say) outlook, one that frankly I believe the founders of Creative Commons (who dared to boldly create something new) would probably be disappointed in.
First, there is no Creative Commons license on the Creative Commons position paper. Why?
Second, there are no names of authors on the Creative Commons position paper. Why?
Lots of people similarly (to the position paper) said the original Creative Commons licenses were a bad idea, or would not be used, or would be ignored, or would otherwise not work as intended. They were wrong.
If I were a lawyer I would fork those existing licenses and produce such “CC-NT” (for “no-training”) variants (though likely prefix them with something else since "CC" means Creative Commons) just to show it could be done, a proof of concept as it were that creators could use.
Or perhaps a few of us could collect funds to pay an intellectual property lawyer to do so, and of course donate all the work produced to the commons, so that Creative Commons (or someone else) could take it, re-use it, build upon it.
Someone needs to take such a bold step, just as Creative Commons itself took a bold step when they dared to create portable re-usable content licenses that any creator could use (a huge innovation at the time, for content, inspired in no doubt by portable re-usable open source licenses⁵).
{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2024-09-20 07:47-0700",
"url": "https://tantek.com/2024/264/t1/cc-nt-for-no-training-llm-genai",
"category": [
"CreativeCommons",
"licenses",
"openSource",
"genAI",
"machineLearning",
"LLM"
],
"content": {
"text": "Dear Creative Commons (@creativecommons.org @creativecommons@mastodon.social @creativecommons@x.com), \n\nCan we have CC-NT licenses for no-training (ML/LLM, GenAI in general), just like we have CC-NC for non-commercial?\n\nMy previous post\u00b9 reminded me that I\u2019ve been creating, writing, inventing, and then sharing things with #CreativeCommons (CC) #licenses for a long time (I have to see if I can dig up my first use of CC licenses.)\n\nI\u2019ve used and recommended a variety of CC licenses for decades, e.g.\n* CC0 \u2014 for standards work, e.g. I drove and wrote up https://wiki.mozilla.org/Standards/licensing (with help from lawyers)\n* CC-BY \u2014 aforementioned blog post (and other snippets of #openSource)\n* CC-BY-NC \u2014 photos on Flickr (dozens of which have been used in publications\u00b2)\n* CC-SA \u2014 for CASSIS\u00b3, which I still consider experimental enough that I chose \"share-alike\" to deliberately slow its spread, and hopefully reduce mutations (while allowing ports of its functions to other languages)\n\nSo I have some idea of what I\u2019m talking about.\n\nThere have been LOTS of discussions of the challenges, downsides, and disagreements with sweeping use of copyrighted content to train generated artificial intelligence AKA #genAI software and services, sometimes also called #machineLearning. The most common examples being Large Language Models AKA #LLM, but also models for generating images and video. Smart, intelligent, and well-intentioned people disagree on who has rights to do what, or even who should do what in this regard.\n\nThere have been many proposals for new standards, or updates to existing standards like robots.txt etc. but I have not really seen them make noticeable progress. There are also lots of techniques published that attempt to block the spiders and bots being used to crawl and collect content for GenAI, an arms race that ends up damaging well-established popular uses such as web search engines (or making it harder to build a new one).\n\nThe brilliant innovation of Creative Commons was to look at the use-cases and intentions of creators publishing on the web in the 2000s and capture them in a small handful of clear licenses with human readable summaries.\n\nCreatives are clamoring for a simple way to opt-out of their publicly published content from being used to train GenAI. New Creative Commons licenses solve this.\n\nThis seems like an obvious thing to me. If you can write a license that forbids \u201ccommercial use\u201d, then you should be able to write a license that forbids use in \u201ctraining models\u201d, which respectful / well-written crawlers should (hopefully) respect, in as much as they respect existing CC licenses.\n\nI saw that Creative Commons published a position paper\u2074 for for an IETF workshop on this topic, and it unfortunately in my opinion has an overly cautious and pessimistic (outright conservative one could say) outlook, one that frankly I believe the founders of Creative Commons (who dared to boldly create something new) would probably be disappointed in.\n\nFirst, there is no Creative Commons license on the Creative Commons position paper. Why?\n\nSecond, there are no names of authors on the Creative Commons position paper. Why?\n\nLots of people similarly (to the position paper) said the original Creative Commons licenses were a bad idea, or would not be used, or would be ignored, or would otherwise not work as intended. They were wrong.\n\nIf I were a lawyer I would fork those existing licenses and produce such \u201cCC-NT\u201d (for \u201cno-training\u201d) variants (though likely prefix them with something else since \"CC\" means Creative Commons) just to show it could be done, a proof of concept as it were that creators could use.\n\nOr perhaps a few of us could collect funds to pay an intellectual property lawyer to do so, and of course donate all the work produced to the commons, so that Creative Commons (or someone else) could take it, re-use it, build upon it.\n\nSomeone needs to take such a bold step, just as Creative Commons itself took a bold step when they dared to create portable re-usable content licenses that any creator could use (a huge innovation at the time, for content, inspired in no doubt by portable re-usable open source licenses\u2075).\n\nReferences:\n\n\u00b9 https://tantek.com/2024/263/t1/20-years-undohtml-css-resets\n\u00b2 https://flickr.com/search/?user_id=tantek&tags=press&view_all=1\n\u00b3 https://tantek.com/github/cassis\n\u2074 Creative Commons Position Paper on Preference Signals, https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-aicontrolws-creative-commons-position-paper-on-preference-signals-00.pdf\n\u2075 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_open-source_software_licenses",
"html": "Dear Creative Commons (<a href=\"https://creativecommons.org\">@creativecommons.org</a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/@creativecommons\">@creativecommons@mastodon.social</a> <a href=\"https://x.com/@creativecommons\">@creativecommons@x.com</a>), <br /><br />Can we have CC-NT licenses for no-training (ML/LLM, GenAI in general), just like we have CC-NC for non-commercial?<br /><br />My previous post<a href=\"https://tantek.com/#t5Z61_note-1\">\u00b9</a> reminded me that I\u2019ve been creating, writing, inventing, and then sharing things with #<span class=\"p-category\">CreativeCommons</span> (CC) #<span class=\"p-category\">licenses</span> for a long time (I have to see if I can dig up my first use of CC licenses.)<br /><br />I\u2019ve used and recommended a variety of CC licenses for decades, e.g.<br />* CC0 \u2014 for standards work, e.g. I drove and wrote up <a href=\"https://wiki.mozilla.org/Standards/licensing\">https://wiki.mozilla.org/Standards/licensing</a> (with help from lawyers)<br />* CC-BY \u2014 aforementioned blog post (and other snippets of #<span class=\"p-category\">openSource</span>)<br />* CC-BY-NC \u2014 photos on Flickr (dozens of which have been used in publications<a href=\"https://tantek.com/#t5Z61_note-2\">\u00b2</a>)<br />* CC-SA \u2014 for CASSIS<a href=\"https://tantek.com/#t5Z61_note-3\">\u00b3</a>, which I still consider experimental enough that I chose \"share-alike\" to deliberately slow its spread, and hopefully reduce mutations (while allowing ports of its functions to other languages)<br /><br />So I have some idea of what I\u2019m talking about.<br /><br />There have been LOTS of discussions of the challenges, downsides, and disagreements with sweeping use of copyrighted content to train generated artificial intelligence AKA #<span class=\"p-category\">genAI</span> software and services, sometimes also called #<span class=\"p-category\">machineLearning</span>. The most common examples being Large Language Models AKA #<span class=\"p-category\">LLM</span>, but also models for generating images and video. Smart, intelligent, and well-intentioned people disagree on who has rights to do what, or even who should do what in this regard.<br /><br />There have been many proposals for new standards, or updates to existing standards like robots.txt etc. but I have not really seen them make noticeable progress. There are also lots of techniques published that attempt to block the spiders and bots being used to crawl and collect content for GenAI, an arms race that ends up damaging well-established popular uses such as web search engines (or making it harder to build a new one).<br /><br />The brilliant innovation of Creative Commons was to look at the use-cases and intentions of creators publishing on the web in the 2000s and capture them in a small handful of clear licenses with human readable summaries.<br /><br />Creatives are clamoring for a simple way to opt-out of their publicly published content from being used to train GenAI. New Creative Commons licenses solve this.<br /><br />This seems like an obvious thing to me. If you can write a license that forbids \u201ccommercial use\u201d, then you should be able to write a license that forbids use in \u201ctraining models\u201d, which respectful / well-written crawlers should (hopefully) respect, in as much as they respect existing CC licenses.<br /><br />I saw that Creative Commons published a position paper<a href=\"https://tantek.com/#t5Z61_note-4\">\u2074</a> for for an IETF workshop on this topic, and it unfortunately in my opinion has an overly cautious and pessimistic (outright conservative one could say) outlook, one that frankly I believe the founders of Creative Commons (who dared to boldly create something new) would probably be disappointed in.<br /><br />First, there is no Creative Commons license on the Creative Commons position paper. Why?<br /><br />Second, there are no names of authors on the Creative Commons position paper. Why?<br /><br />Lots of people similarly (to the position paper) said the original Creative Commons licenses were a bad idea, or would not be used, or would be ignored, or would otherwise not work as intended. They were wrong.<br /><br />If I were a lawyer I would fork those existing licenses and produce such \u201cCC-NT\u201d (for \u201cno-training\u201d) variants (though likely prefix them with something else since \"CC\" means Creative Commons) just to show it could be done, a proof of concept as it were that creators could use.<br /><br />Or perhaps a few of us could collect funds to pay an intellectual property lawyer to do so, and of course donate all the work produced to the commons, so that Creative Commons (or someone else) could take it, re-use it, build upon it.<br /><br />Someone needs to take such a bold step, just as Creative Commons itself took a bold step when they dared to create portable re-usable content licenses that any creator could use (a huge innovation at the time, for content, inspired in no doubt by portable re-usable open source licenses<a href=\"https://tantek.com/#t5Z61_note-5\">\u2075</a>).<br /><br />References:<br /><br /><a href=\"https://tantek.com/#t5Z61_ref-1\">\u00b9</a> <a href=\"https://tantek.com/2024/263/t1/20-years-undohtml-css-resets\">https://tantek.com/2024/263/t1/20-years-undohtml-css-resets</a><br /><a href=\"https://tantek.com/#t5Z61_ref-2\">\u00b2</a> <a href=\"https://flickr.com/search/?user_id=tantek&tags=press&view_all=1\">https://flickr.com/search/?user_id=tantek&tags=press&view_all=1</a><br /><a href=\"https://tantek.com/#t5Z61_ref-3\">\u00b3</a> <a href=\"https://tantek.com/github/cassis\">https://tantek.com/github/cassis</a><br /><a href=\"https://tantek.com/#t5Z61_ref-4\">\u2074</a> Creative Commons Position Paper on Preference Signals, <a href=\"https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-aicontrolws-creative-commons-position-paper-on-preference-signals-00.pdf\">https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-aicontrolws-creative-commons-position-paper-on-preference-signals-00.pdf</a><br /><a href=\"https://tantek.com/#t5Z61_ref-5\">\u2075</a> <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_open-source_software_licenses\">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_open-source_software_licenses</a>"
},
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Tantek \u00c7elik",
"url": "https://tantek.com/",
"photo": "https://tantek.com/photo.jpg"
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"_id": "42300948",
"_source": "2460"
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20 years and two weeks ago, I came up with undohtml.css and unknowingly invented the mechanism of CSS Resets (AKA reboot or reset style sheets¹) which spawned numerous variants, many still in broad use on the web today.
A one sentence problem description, and a short paragraph describing my problem-solving, actions, license, link to less than 300 bytes of code (not counting comments), and a few future thoughts.
The rest of that blog post was about “debug scaffolding”, the part I thought was more interesting at the time.
~6 months later Eric published his evergreen resource “CSS Tools: Reset CSS” * https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/ which, as you see within the URL: “css/reset”, is perhaps where the phrase “CSS Reset” comes from, and it’s also the label (link text) he gives that page in his UI about-page² and the first content link in his 404 page³.
My technology invention takeaways from all this:
1. if you find yourself repeatedly solving the same (especially annoying) problem, create a re-usable solution that works for you 2. write up your problem statement / use-case in only one sentence 3. publish your solution (on your personal site⁴), name it something short, with only a short paragraph description, and re-use/remix friendly license (like Creative Commons)
And things not to worry about (that may get in your way to publishing):
1. perfecting or making your solution “big enough” or “the right size”. does it solve your problem? then it’s already the right size. 2. coming up with the perfect name. instead, name it what it does. someone might come up with a better name weeks, months, or years later. let them run with it! 3. waiting to blog multiple things. I could have blogged undohtml.css by itself, probably should have, and instead lumped it into a blog post with another CSS thing I came up with.
{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2024-09-19 17:35-0700",
"url": "https://tantek.com/2024/263/t1/20-years-undohtml-css-resets",
"category": [
"undoHTML",
"undoHTMLCSS",
"reset",
"CSSreset",
"resetstyles",
"webdesign",
"technology",
"invention",
"indieweb"
],
"content": {
"text": "20 years and two weeks ago, I came up with undohtml.css and unknowingly invented the mechanism of CSS Resets (AKA reboot or reset style sheets\u00b9) which spawned numerous variants, many still in broad use on the web today.\n\nhttps://tantek.com/log/2004/09.html#d06t2354\n\nA one sentence problem description, and a short paragraph describing my problem-solving, actions, license, link to less than 300 bytes of code (not counting comments), and a few future thoughts.\n\nThe rest of that blog post was about \u201cdebug scaffolding\u201d, the part I thought was more interesting at the time.\n\nEric Meyer (@meyerweb.com @meyerweb@mastodon.social) followed up ~10 days afterwards with his thinking and improvements:\n* https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2004/09/15/emreallyem-undoing-htmlcss/\nwhere he mentioned \u201cresetting\u201d in passing, but not actually calling it a \"reset\".\n\n~2.5 years later Eric published \u201cReset Styles\u201d with further reasoning and improvements:\n* http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/04/12/reset-styles/\ndescribing them as: \u201creset\u201d or \u201cbaseline\u201d set of styles.\n\nSubsequently he iterated in several more blog posts:\n* http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/04/14/reworked-reset/\n* http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/04/18/reset-reasoning/ \u2014 this is Eric\u2019s first post where he explicitly calls them \u201creset styles\u201d, which I believe is the origin of the eventual phrase \u201cCSS Reset\u201d and \u201creset style sheets\u201d\n* http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/05/01/reset-reloaded/ (yes a Matrix: Reloaded reference)\n\n~6 months later Eric published his evergreen resource \u201cCSS Tools: Reset CSS\u201d\n* https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/\nwhich, as you see within the URL: \u201ccss/reset\u201d, is perhaps where the phrase \u201cCSS Reset\u201d comes from, and it\u2019s also the label (link text) he gives that page in his UI about-page\u00b2 and the first content link in his 404 page\u00b3.\n\nMy technology invention takeaways from all this:\n\n1. if you find yourself repeatedly solving the same (especially annoying) problem, create a re-usable solution that works for you\n2. write up your problem statement / use-case in only one sentence\n3. publish your solution (on your personal site\u2074), name it something short, with only a short paragraph description, and re-use/remix friendly license (like Creative Commons)\n\nAnd things not to worry about (that may get in your way to publishing):\n\n1. perfecting or making your solution \u201cbig enough\u201d or \u201cthe right size\u201d. does it solve your problem? then it\u2019s already the right size.\n2. coming up with the perfect name. instead, name it what it does. someone might come up with a better name weeks, months, or years later. let them run with it!\n3. waiting to blog multiple things. I could have blogged undohtml.css by itself, probably should have, and instead lumped it into a blog post with another CSS thing I came up with.\n\nFurther reading and resources for CSS Resets:\n\n* More history: https://css-tricks.com/reboot-resets-reasoning/\n* Large collection: https://perishablepress.com/a-killer-collection-of-global-css-reset-styles/\n\nReferences:\n\n\u00b9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reset_style_sheet\n\u00b2 https://meyerweb.com/ui/about.html\n\u00b3 https://meyerweb.com/404\n\u2074 https://indieweb.org/\n\n#undoHTML #undoHTMLCSS #reset #CSSreset #resetstyles #webdesign #technology #invention #indieweb",
"html": "20 years and two weeks ago, I came up with undohtml.css and unknowingly invented the mechanism of CSS Resets (AKA reboot or reset style sheets<a href=\"https://tantek.com/#t5Z51_note-1\">\u00b9</a>) which spawned numerous variants, many still in broad use on the web today.<br /><br /><a href=\"https://tantek.com/log/2004/09.html#d06t2354\">https://tantek.com/log/2004/09.html#d06t2354</a><br /><br />A one sentence problem description, and a short paragraph describing my problem-solving, actions, license, link to less than 300 bytes of code (not counting comments), and a few future thoughts.<br /><br />The rest of that blog post was about \u201cdebug scaffolding\u201d, the part I thought was more interesting at the time.<br /><br />Eric Meyer (<a href=\"https://meyerweb.com\">@meyerweb.com</a> <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/@meyerweb\">@meyerweb@mastodon.social</a>) followed up ~10 days afterwards with his thinking and improvements:<br />* <a href=\"https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2004/09/15/emreallyem-undoing-htmlcss/\">https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2004/09/15/emreallyem-undoing-htmlcss/</a><br />where he mentioned \u201cresetting\u201d in passing, but not actually calling it a \"reset\".<br /><br />~2.5 years later Eric published \u201cReset Styles\u201d with further reasoning and improvements:<br />* <a href=\"http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/04/12/reset-styles/\">http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/04/12/reset-styles/</a><br />describing them as: \u201creset\u201d or \u201cbaseline\u201d set of styles.<br /><br />Subsequently he iterated in several more blog posts:<br />* <a href=\"http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/04/14/reworked-reset/\">http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/04/14/reworked-reset/</a><br />* <a href=\"http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/04/18/reset-reasoning/\">http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/04/18/reset-reasoning/</a> \u2014 this is Eric\u2019s first post where he explicitly calls them \u201creset styles\u201d, which I believe is the origin of the eventual phrase \u201cCSS Reset\u201d and \u201creset style sheets\u201d<br />* <a href=\"http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/05/01/reset-reloaded/\">http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/05/01/reset-reloaded/</a> (yes a Matrix: Reloaded reference)<br /><br />~6 months later Eric published his evergreen resource \u201cCSS Tools: Reset CSS\u201d<br />* <a href=\"https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/\">https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/</a><br />which, as you see within the URL: \u201ccss/reset\u201d, is perhaps where the phrase \u201cCSS Reset\u201d comes from, and it\u2019s also the label (link text) he gives that page in his UI about-page<a href=\"https://tantek.com/#t5Z51_note-2\">\u00b2</a> and the first content link in his 404 page<a href=\"https://tantek.com/#t5Z51_note-3\">\u00b3</a>.<br /><br />My technology invention takeaways from all this:<br /><br />1. if you find yourself repeatedly solving the same (especially annoying) problem, create a re-usable solution that works for you<br />2. write up your problem statement / use-case in only one sentence<br />3. publish your solution (on your personal site<a href=\"https://tantek.com/#t5Z51_note-4\">\u2074</a>), name it something short, with only a short paragraph description, and re-use/remix friendly license (like Creative Commons)<br /><br />And things not to worry about (that may get in your way to publishing):<br /><br />1. perfecting or making your solution \u201cbig enough\u201d or \u201cthe right size\u201d. does it solve your problem? then it\u2019s already the right size.<br />2. coming up with the perfect name. instead, name it what it does. someone might come up with a better name weeks, months, or years later. let them run with it!<br />3. waiting to blog multiple things. I could have blogged undohtml.css by itself, probably should have, and instead lumped it into a blog post with another CSS thing I came up with.<br /><br />Further reading and resources for CSS Resets:<br /><br />* More history: <a href=\"https://css-tricks.com/reboot-resets-reasoning/\">https://css-tricks.com/reboot-resets-reasoning/</a><br />* Large collection: <a href=\"https://perishablepress.com/a-killer-collection-of-global-css-reset-styles/\">https://perishablepress.com/a-killer-collection-of-global-css-reset-styles/</a><br /><br />References:<br /><br /><a href=\"https://tantek.com/#t5Z51_ref-1\">\u00b9</a> <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reset_style_sheet\">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reset_style_sheet</a><br /><a href=\"https://tantek.com/#t5Z51_ref-2\">\u00b2</a> <a href=\"https://meyerweb.com/ui/about.html\">https://meyerweb.com/ui/about.html</a><br /><a href=\"https://tantek.com/#t5Z51_ref-3\">\u00b3</a> <a href=\"https://meyerweb.com/404\">https://meyerweb.com/404</a><br /><a href=\"https://tantek.com/#t5Z51_ref-4\">\u2074</a> <a href=\"https://indieweb.org/\">https://indieweb.org/</a><br /><br />#<span class=\"p-category\">undoHTML</span> #<span class=\"p-category\">undoHTMLCSS</span> #<span class=\"p-category\">reset</span> #<span class=\"p-category\">CSSreset</span> #<span class=\"p-category\">resetstyles</span> #<span class=\"p-category\">webdesign</span> #<span class=\"p-category\">technology</span> #<span class=\"p-category\">invention</span> #<span class=\"p-category\">indieweb</span>"
},
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Tantek \u00c7elik",
"url": "https://tantek.com/",
"photo": "https://tantek.com/photo.jpg"
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"post-type": "note",
"_id": "42295509",
"_source": "2460"
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I'm home alone for the week so I made a giant stack of oat+tofu waffles and giant batch of baked ziti with roasted vegetables so that I have instant breakfast and dinner every day
{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2024-09-19T20:32:37-07:00",
"url": "https://aaronparecki.com/2024/09/19/8/",
"category": [
"cooking"
],
"photo": [
"https://aperture-media.p3k.io/aaronparecki.com/adce72f401b4e9bab1674dbca85d2cc75c80a2ac417936ee6d9effc0c7c485eb.jpg",
"https://aperture-media.p3k.io/aaronparecki.com/b70c652ab44fdc49c1193aa7dd8af590a726d670665c0ff373a36304a378cb51.jpg"
],
"content": {
"text": "I'm home alone for the week so I made a giant stack of oat+tofu waffles and giant batch of baked ziti with roasted vegetables so that I have instant breakfast and dinner every day"
},
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Aaron Parecki",
"url": "https://aaronparecki.com/",
"photo": "https://aperture-media.p3k.io/aaronparecki.com/41061f9de825966faa22e9c42830e1d4a614a321213b4575b9488aa93f89817a.jpg"
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"_id": "42295389",
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}
{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2024-09-19T09:00:04-07:00",
"url": "https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/3226-postponing-the-concert",
"name": "postponing the concert",
"content": {
"text": "I\u2019m having a bad pain flareup and as much as I\u2019d like to push through it and do the concert anyway, from experience I know that\u2019ll just make things worse and I\u2019m trying to get better at self-care and showing myself the same understanding I show others.\n\nSo, tentatively I\u2019m planning on my next VR concert being on September 29, at 9 PM Pacific time, hosted on my VRChat group. And of course it\u2019ll be streamed over on my Owncast. Here\u2019s a Discord event link.\n\nThe great thing about performing virtually is that I don\u2019t have to worry about venue booking. I can make my own rules for this and I don\u2019t have to feel bad about the reality of my health.\n\n\ud83d\udc9c",
"html": "<p>I\u2019m having a bad pain flareup and as much as I\u2019d like to push through it and do <a href=\"https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/6150-Concert-time-polling\">the concert</a> anyway, from experience I know that\u2019ll just make things worse and I\u2019m trying to get better at self-care and showing myself the same understanding I show others.</p><p>So, <em>tentatively</em> I\u2019m planning on my next VR concert being on <a href=\"https://time.is/compare/0900pm_29_Sep_2024_in_Seattle?Sockpuppet_in_VR\">September 29, at 9 PM Pacific time</a>, hosted on <a href=\"https://vrc.group/MUSIC.1138\">my VRChat group</a>. And of course it\u2019ll be streamed <a href=\"https://live.sockpuppet.us/\">over on my Owncast</a>. Here\u2019s a <a href=\"https://discord.com/events/193241595527561216/1286362466208710657\">Discord event link</a>.</p><p>The great thing about performing virtually is that I don\u2019t have to worry about venue booking. I can make my own rules for this and I don\u2019t have to feel bad about the reality of my health.</p><p>\ud83d\udc9c</p>"
},
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "fluffy",
"url": "https://beesbuzz.biz/",
"photo": "https://beesbuzz.biz/static/headshot.jpg"
},
"post-type": "article",
"_id": "42290515",
"_source": "2778"
}
{
"type": "entry",
"author": {
"name": "Cathie",
"url": "https://cathieleblanc.com/",
"photo": null
},
"url": "https://cathieleblanc.com/2024/09/17/creating-assets-with-nandeck/",
"published": "2024-09-17T20:54:41-04:00",
"content": {
"html": "<p>It has been a while since I wrote a blog post. I\u2019m on sabbatical this academic year and I am working on a game for my sabbatical project. I\u2019ve been posting some updates about my progress to my social media accounts but this is the first post that I have felt compelled to write documenting my learning and my progress.</p>\n<p>I\u2019m creating a <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deck-building_game\">deck-building</a>, astrophotography-themed game for my sabbatical project. Although I have created many video games in the past, I have never published one on <a href=\"https://store.steampowered.com/\">Steam</a> and I have never created all of the components (called <em>assets</em>) myself. So I\u2019ve been learning to use a bunch of new tools for asset creation as I\u2019ve been developing the game\u2019s main mechanic. Today, I spent some time learning to use <em><a href=\"https://www.nandeck.com/\">nanDECK</a></em>, which is a tool for building custom decks of cards.</p>\n<p>Before I explain why I am using<em> nanDECK</em> and how it works, it might be useful to explain what a deck-building game is. In a typical deck-building game, players are given an initial set of low value cards. As the game progresses, players play the cards from their deck to achieve various results. Players are also given opportunities to add cards, usually of higher value, to their decks. Each player\u2019s deck typically becomes more valuable in unique ways. Often, when I describe deck-building to someone, they will ask me if <em><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering\">Magic: the Gathering</a></em> or <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Trading_Card_Game\"><em>Pokemon</em></a> is a deck-building game. These are collectible card games (CCGs), a genre that differs from deck-building games. CCGs require players to purchase their decks outside of the game itself and each player comes into any given instance of the game with a deck that is already different from those of the other players. In a deck-building game, the cards are part of the game and, typically, everyone starts with the same set of initial cards, building their deck through the gameplay of this particular instance of the game. My favorite physical deck-building game is currently <a href=\"https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/365717/clank-catacombs\"><em>Clank!: Catacombs</em></a> with the original <a href=\"https://shop.direwolfdigital.com/products/clank-a-deck-building-adventure\"><em>Clank!</em></a> close behind. But the game that got me thinking about a deck-building video game is <a href=\"https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/slay-the-spire-switch/?srsltid=AfmBOoqpYiq_5Otq_98hiO2PqghW3h5yEgW8HUYbpzf1TmNnAaBpT5zW\"><em>Slay the Spire</em></a>, which was released as an early access game in 2017 with regular updates until its official release in 2019. By March 2020, it had sold 1.5 million copies. As of May of this year, the game has sold 3 million copies just on <em>Steam</em> but it\u2019s available on most platforms, including mobile, so its sales are much, much higher than that. I play on the <em>Nintendo Switch</em>. I have played other deck-building video games and none has captured my attention like <em>Slay the Spire</em>. So it inspired me to try to create my own deck-building game.</p>\n<p>One of the major challenges of creating a deck-building game is to create an interesting set of cards that allow a player to build decks focused on a variety of gameplay strategies. Creating a consistent look and feel for the cards is essential so that all of these pieces feel like a coherent set of components for the game. Let\u2019s look at some of the cards in <em>Clank!</em> as examples.</p>\n<p>Here is a single card that a player might be able to add to their deck during the game:</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://i0.wp.com/cathieleblanc.com/wp-content/uploads/clanksingle.jpg?resize=300%2C300&ssl=1\" alt=\"Labeled card from Clank!\" /></p>\n<p>Each of the cards has the same set of areas with only the values in those areas being different. The lower right corner (labeled A) has a number indicating the number of blue points required to purchase the card. This card will cost the player 4 blue points. The upper left corner (labeled B) contains information about the benefits the card gives the player when they play it. This card gives the player 1 blue point and 1 sword. The upper right corner (labeled C) is either blank or has a number in green indicating the number of points the player will receive at the end of the game if they own this card. This card will give the player 2 points at the end of the game. At the top of the card in the area labeled D is the name of the card. This card is called Elven Dagger. The area labeled E contains an image representing the card. This card is represented by an image of a dagger. And the area labeled F contains some sort of instructions or descriptions that come into play at various times. When a player plays this card, they are allowed to draw an additional card from their deck.</p>\n<p><em>Clank!</em> has many, many cards. Here are some additional examples.</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i0.wp.com/cathieleblanc.com/wp-content/uploads/clankadv.jpg?resize=300%2C300&ssl=1\" alt=\"\" /></p>\n<p>As the designers of <em>Clank!</em> were working on the game, they probably hadn\u2019t decided exactly where each piece of information was going to be displayed on the card. They might not have even decided exactly what information was going to go on each card. And when they created their first draft of these cards, I can guarantee they hadn\u2019t decided the exact values that were going to go into each area of each card. For example, they might originally have given the Elven Dagger a cost of 6 blue points and maybe the original number of green points at the end of the game was 5. Through play-testing, they would tweak these values to see how gameplay was affected, trying to balance the game through each successive iteration. Having to recreate the entire card by hand each time a change was made would be extremely time-consuming. There must be a better way!</p>\n<p>That\u2019s where a tool like <em>nanDECK</em> comes in. With <em>nanDECK</em>, the designer can create a template for the physical layout of the cards, specifying where each value should appear. They then can create a spreadsheet of the various values and merge that spreadsheet with the layout template that they had created. I started this process today. My cards are still quite ugly but I was focused on functionality rather than prettiness as I learned to use the tool.</p>\n<p>First, I created a spreadsheet with the values of the cards I wanted to create:</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://i0.wp.com/cathieleblanc.com/wp-content/uploads/spreadsheet.png?resize=664%2C597&ssl=1\" alt=\"\" /></p>\n<p>The top row of the spreadsheet is the name of each value I want to use in my cards. Each card will have a Name, a Type, a Cost, a Time to Capture, and an image. Each additional row is a separate card. So using this spreadsheet I could create 15 different cards. The first card will be a Phone Camera card that costs 100, has a Time to Capture value of 100, and whose image is stored in a file called smartphone.png. I really like that it will be easy to modify the various values, including the images (by just changing the image file) as I work on balancing the game. I can also easily add more columns to the spreadsheet if I need additional values.</p>\n<p>Here\u2019s the <em>nanDECK</em> interface (which looks more complicated than it actually is):</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://i0.wp.com/cathieleblanc.com/wp-content/uploads/naninterface.png?resize=1358%2C594&ssl=1\" alt=\"\" /></p>\n\n<p>The right side of the interface is a visual preview of the 4th card in my list. The left side contains a set of actions to do things like Build the cards and Print the cards. The middle window is the actual code that specifies the layout template and merges it with the spreadsheet I created. Luckily, I didn\u2019t need to write all of this code by hand. There is a visual editor that allows you to easily create the card layout. It looks like this:</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://i0.wp.com/cathieleblanc.com/wp-content/uploads/visedit.png?resize=787%2C595&ssl=1\" alt=\"\" /></p>\n<p>The left side is a set of objects that you can add to the layout. The middle is a preview layout of one of the cards that you\u2019re building. The right side is the set of commands that build the actual cards in a particular order.</p>\n<p>Finally, you can save individual image files for each card you have created or you can put them all together into a single document that you can print and cut out (if you were making a board game or need strips of images in your game development software). That looks like this:</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://i0.wp.com/cathieleblanc.com/wp-content/uploads/cards.png?resize=751%2C655&ssl=1\" alt=\"\" /></p>\n<p>I was learning to use <em>nanDECK</em> today so creating the draft set of cards that I have so far took about an hour as I navigated the various commands and objects I could use. Now that I know how to use the, creating this set of cards would probably take me about 5 minutes. Once the real cards are created, I will import them as a sprites into <em>GameMaker</em>, the game development software that I am using.</p>\n<p>There is a ton more work to do since today I only worked on the equipment cards for my astrophotography game. None of the clip-art images that I used today will end up on the final cards that I create. Instead, I will use my own drawings and/or photos for all images. I also will create a set of enemy cards (Dr. Cloud, for example) and a set of target cards. Creating these assets will be time-consuming but less time-consuming now that I\u2019m using <em>nanDECK</em>.</p>",
"text": "It has been a while since I wrote a blog post. I\u2019m on sabbatical this academic year and I am working on a game for my sabbatical project. I\u2019ve been posting some updates about my progress to my social media accounts but this is the first post that I have felt compelled to write documenting my learning and my progress.\nI\u2019m creating a deck-building, astrophotography-themed game for my sabbatical project. Although I have created many video games in the past, I have never published one on Steam and I have never created all of the components (called assets) myself. So I\u2019ve been learning to use a bunch of new tools for asset creation as I\u2019ve been developing the game\u2019s main mechanic. Today, I spent some time learning to use nanDECK, which is a tool for building custom decks of cards.\nBefore I explain why I am using nanDECK and how it works, it might be useful to explain what a deck-building game is. In a typical deck-building game, players are given an initial set of low value cards. As the game progresses, players play the cards from their deck to achieve various results. Players are also given opportunities to add cards, usually of higher value, to their decks. Each player\u2019s deck typically becomes more valuable in unique ways. Often, when I describe deck-building to someone, they will ask me if Magic: the Gathering or Pokemon is a deck-building game. These are collectible card games (CCGs), a genre that differs from deck-building games. CCGs require players to purchase their decks outside of the game itself and each player comes into any given instance of the game with a deck that is already different from those of the other players. In a deck-building game, the cards are part of the game and, typically, everyone starts with the same set of initial cards, building their deck through the gameplay of this particular instance of the game. My favorite physical deck-building game is currently Clank!: Catacombs with the original Clank! close behind. But the game that got me thinking about a deck-building video game is Slay the Spire, which was released as an early access game in 2017 with regular updates until its official release in 2019. By March 2020, it had sold 1.5 million copies. As of May of this year, the game has sold 3 million copies just on Steam but it\u2019s available on most platforms, including mobile, so its sales are much, much higher than that. I play on the Nintendo Switch. I have played other deck-building video games and none has captured my attention like Slay the Spire. So it inspired me to try to create my own deck-building game.\nOne of the major challenges of creating a deck-building game is to create an interesting set of cards that allow a player to build decks focused on a variety of gameplay strategies. Creating a consistent look and feel for the cards is essential so that all of these pieces feel like a coherent set of components for the game. Let\u2019s look at some of the cards in Clank! as examples.\nHere is a single card that a player might be able to add to their deck during the game:\n\nEach of the cards has the same set of areas with only the values in those areas being different. The lower right corner (labeled A) has a number indicating the number of blue points required to purchase the card. This card will cost the player 4 blue points. The upper left corner (labeled B) contains information about the benefits the card gives the player when they play it. This card gives the player 1 blue point and 1 sword. The upper right corner (labeled C) is either blank or has a number in green indicating the number of points the player will receive at the end of the game if they own this card. This card will give the player 2 points at the end of the game. At the top of the card in the area labeled D is the name of the card. This card is called Elven Dagger. The area labeled E contains an image representing the card. This card is represented by an image of a dagger. And the area labeled F contains some sort of instructions or descriptions that come into play at various times. When a player plays this card, they are allowed to draw an additional card from their deck.\nClank! has many, many cards. Here are some additional examples.\n\n\nAs the designers of Clank! were working on the game, they probably hadn\u2019t decided exactly where each piece of information was going to be displayed on the card. They might not have even decided exactly what information was going to go on each card. And when they created their first draft of these cards, I can guarantee they hadn\u2019t decided the exact values that were going to go into each area of each card. For example, they might originally have given the Elven Dagger a cost of 6 blue points and maybe the original number of green points at the end of the game was 5. Through play-testing, they would tweak these values to see how gameplay was affected, trying to balance the game through each successive iteration. Having to recreate the entire card by hand each time a change was made would be extremely time-consuming. There must be a better way!\nThat\u2019s where a tool like nanDECK comes in. With nanDECK, the designer can create a template for the physical layout of the cards, specifying where each value should appear. They then can create a spreadsheet of the various values and merge that spreadsheet with the layout template that they had created. I started this process today. My cards are still quite ugly but I was focused on functionality rather than prettiness as I learned to use the tool.\nFirst, I created a spreadsheet with the values of the cards I wanted to create:\n\nThe top row of the spreadsheet is the name of each value I want to use in my cards. Each card will have a Name, a Type, a Cost, a Time to Capture, and an image. Each additional row is a separate card. So using this spreadsheet I could create 15 different cards. The first card will be a Phone Camera card that costs 100, has a Time to Capture value of 100, and whose image is stored in a file called smartphone.png. I really like that it will be easy to modify the various values, including the images (by just changing the image file) as I work on balancing the game. I can also easily add more columns to the spreadsheet if I need additional values.\nHere\u2019s the nanDECK interface (which looks more complicated than it actually is):\n\n\nThe right side of the interface is a visual preview of the 4th card in my list. The left side contains a set of actions to do things like Build the cards and Print the cards. The middle window is the actual code that specifies the layout template and merges it with the spreadsheet I created. Luckily, I didn\u2019t need to write all of this code by hand. There is a visual editor that allows you to easily create the card layout. It looks like this:\n\nThe left side is a set of objects that you can add to the layout. The middle is a preview layout of one of the cards that you\u2019re building. The right side is the set of commands that build the actual cards in a particular order.\nFinally, you can save individual image files for each card you have created or you can put them all together into a single document that you can print and cut out (if you were making a board game or need strips of images in your game development software). That looks like this:\n\nI was learning to use nanDECK today so creating the draft set of cards that I have so far took about an hour as I navigated the various commands and objects I could use. Now that I know how to use the, creating this set of cards would probably take me about 5 minutes. Once the real cards are created, I will import them as a sprites into GameMaker, the game development software that I am using.\nThere is a ton more work to do since today I only worked on the equipment cards for my astrophotography game. None of the clip-art images that I used today will end up on the final cards that I create. Instead, I will use my own drawings and/or photos for all images. I also will create a set of enemy cards (Dr. Cloud, for example) and a set of target cards. Creating these assets will be time-consuming but less time-consuming now that I\u2019m using nanDECK."
},
"name": "Creating Assets with nanDECK",
"post-type": "article",
"_id": "42273398",
"_source": "2782"
}
