Some Days You Find Yourself Illustrating Venerable Irish Actor And Star Trek Alumnus Colm Meaney, And

Bell “Gallows-Frame” telephone 1875

Alexander Graham Bell's original telephone prototype used a single magneto-based device as both transmitter and receiver.  The user spoke into the single orifice, and put the device to their ear to hear the response.

The device, which gets its nickname from its elegant mahogany frame, was the first with which Bell demonstrated transmission of voice-like sounds.  Intelligible speech would be transmitted by Bell with a redesigned unit the following year.

Acrylic on canvas, 7x5″.  From my series of paintings of historical telephones.

One thing I've been coming back to a lot recently is a song by Information Society called "Where the I Divides."

This is me getting some emotional stuff through my system by singing it to myself, accompanied only by a soft drizzle and some late-night/early-morning city traffic outside my apartment window.

Joan Clarke June 24, 1917 – September 4, 1996

Working alongside Alan Turing and other codebreakers at England's famous Bletchley Park during World War II, Joan Clarke was considered among the most brilliant mathematicians on staff.

She faced many hurdles in her career due to her gender.  One famous example of this occurred when, as no suitable senior codebreaking position existed at Bletchley to which a female was allowed to be promoted, she was granted the title of "linguist" to grant her some measure of recognition for her work.  Clarke, who spoke no second language, would later recall with bemusement filling out paperwork with "grade: linguist, languages: none."

Acrylic on canvas, 5x7″.  From my set Luminaries of the Hacker World.

A true story starring myself, my cats, and nypl.

I was screwing around with the Doctor Who Red Nose Day special short "Space/Time" (see those first if you haven't) and this accidentally happened.

Doctor Who ©BBC.

My BFF Grey has a listing on the Internet Movie Database.

As you may know, if someone listed on IMDb wants to upload a photograph to their listing they need to buy a pro membership on the site.  While I couldn't do that for her, I did the next best thing: I redrew my Fairey-ish portrait of her in smileys, and posted it to her IMDb message board.

I can't help but think the potential of message board smileys as an artistic medium has barely been scratched.

The great Harold Ramis passed away today.  His work meant a great deal to me; not only Ghostbusters (which I love) but his many other contributions to the world of comedy and the art of filmmaking.

As the news circulated, a small shrine to Ramis popped up on the sidewalk in front of Ghostbusters HQ (or, as it’s known in real life, Hook and Ladder 8.)  I sketched a portrait of Ramis on a small art card, and went downtown to add it to the memorial.  I then got to hang out for a bit with the others who had gathered there in the cold - including a Ghostbuster in full homemade uniform and proton pack - and we all chatted about what the man and his work meant to us.

He’ll be missed.

The Next HOPE conference badge, for which I did the graphics.

These badges didn't just grant admission to the conference, they served as fully functional and hackable tracking beacons for its Attendee Meta-Data project.  (There's a video explaining the basics here, and more hardcore hardware info from the extremely neighborly Travis Goodspeed here.)  After the electronics were laid out and finalized, I was given the badge files so I could scrawl like a madman all over graphically enhance them.

I used what space and resources I had to bring the badge in line with the conference's retrofuturistic design theme, while highlighting and playing with some of the text labels and gadgetry within.  I even snuck in a silly little detail only a few people ever found and called me out on; the grid above the arrow logo makes use of a method I came up with in elementary school for hiding messages in notebook sheets, and contains the conference's initials.

This is the first thing I ever made completely in Inkscape.

In today’s daily doodle, President William McKinley wishes he had a Nintendo Game Boy.

I have some post-it notes illustrated with Tom Servo of "Mystery Science Theater 3000." For today's daily doodle, I added some more Servos to one.