Author: lemsy

John LeMasney (lemsy) is an artist, graphic designer, and technology creative. He is located in beautiful Nelson County, VA, but works remotely with ease. Contact him at: lemasney@gmail.com to discuss your next creative project.

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Illustration of a leaf by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

Leaf illustration by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
Leaf illustration by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
Leaf illustration by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
Leaf illustration by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

I saw a beautiful illustration on Pinterest that made use of clipping, and decided to play with the idea for myself. In Inkscape, if you import an image, like the palette in the illustration above, and make or import a shape, such as the leaf here, you can place the leaf shape on top of the palette image and apply object/clipping/set clip which results in the clipped image above. I added a rectangle in white, set transparency to 50%, and added the word leaf in one of my favorite fonts, Bebas Neue, and applied a skew.

It’s an interesting way to visually share two ideas in a single image. Both the palette and the leaf have their own visual message, and together they send an interesting combination of the two. I could have used a photograph instead to possibly make a statement about love or business or nature, or all three. Open up Inkscape and try this technique for yourself.

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Technology and the Arts: On getting started with Scratch

So, Brian Kelley and I did the third installment of Technology and the Arts, our weekly/seasonal podcast that focuses on the connections between technology and art. I thought it was one of our better shows, low on glitch, high on value. Please visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwg8Pl-qWSc?t=30m50s where I give a brief demo on MIT‘s Scratch project, a block programming platform for games, art, animation, and more. It’s targeted at kids who want to jump right into programming, but I find that it’s a great platform for any age to work out programming ideas. In the demo, I show you how to get to it, what a project looks like, how to open it for editing, and how too find other projects. Please visit the video in its full form to hear us talk about the rest of our topics, which this week included Google Easter Eggs, a great podcast called It’s a Thing with Molly Wood and Tom Merritt, Jay-Z‘s Picasso Baby art happening as video, and more. Like, subscribe, and find the rest of our online presence at the youtube page.

If you liked this post, please consider subscribing to this site by using the subscription form at the bottom of this page. Maybe Facebook is more your thing? Like our Facebook page at the bottom of this page. We’re also on Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, and other social networks listed at the top of this page. Please like, comment, and share if you found this post useful, interesting, or kind.

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My favorite source for staying informed.

phone by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
phone by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

What do you mean podcasts?

I don’t listen to the radio anymore. I mean I still listen to NPR content, like Fresh Air and This American Life, I just don’t ever listen over the air anymore. A few years ago, I upgraded my stock (2006) car radio to one with an auxiliary 1/8 inch audio jack and USB port so that I could take any audio device with a headphone out jack or USB key and use it to share audio in my car. It was by far my best automotive upgrade. Now, when I hop in my car, it takes just a second to plug in power and audio, and I’m listening to Spotify, Google Music, Stitcher, Pocketcasts, GPS instructions, audio readouts of my texts (with the help of Tasker), and anything else I would normally hear through the notably bad speaker on my phone. Sometime, I’ll share the various audio apps in detail, but for now, I wanted to focus on content.

Staying informed about technology

I’m a technologist. One of the most valuable things about the work that I do is staying informed about trends, listening to new problems and solutions, hearing technology related news, and getting synopses of the latest developer conferences, lawsuits, and other events in the tech world. Here are the podcasts that I listen to in order to get this information most efficiently.

Anything from the TWiT Network.

TWiT
TWiT (Photo credit: insidetwit)

There are several shows I deeply enjoy and look forward to from Leo Laporte’s powerful technology-centric network. My favorites are This Week in Tech (a roundtable discussion on the happenings of the week in regards to technology), This Week in Google (A conversation about cloud based computing, news from Google, and sometimes popular culture), and All About Android (a show focusing on the latest news related to the mobile operating system). The content may sound dry but the beauty of this network is the amazingly entertaining talents of people like Leo, a seasoned radio and TV personality, Gina Trapani, an open source advocate and developer, Tom Merritt, a multi-talented host and presenter, Jeff Jarvis, a pundit and philosopher on journalism, and many others who are well-known in the technology broadcasting world.  I highly recommend visiting the network and seeing what particular topics are important to your work and life, and subscribing.

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On the five-minute ten-second egg.

fluffy by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
fluffy by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
English: Soft boiled egg with black lava salt ...
English: Soft boiled egg with black lava salt from hawaii (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Five Minute Ten-Second Egg

I really love clarity. The five-ten egg (the five-minute ten-second egg) does this.

The five-ten egg is a very specific instruction for a perfectly soft-boiled egg. It refers to the amount of time which you boiled the egg to make it simply perfect, that is, easy to disrobe from the shell, hard on the outside, soft on the inside, and neither under-cooked not overcooked. I can attest to this reality, because I’ve done it and reaped the luxurious benefits of it. Boil an egg for exactly five minutes and ten seconds, and you have joy in a shell.

Make it yourself

What’s more, it could not be more simple to make this perfectly cooked egg yourself. Do the following if you want to experience it for yourself.

Bring a pot of water to a boil. Set another pot with water at room temperature. Set a timer for 5:10. Don’t start it until we’re set to drop the egg.

Take a pushpin and pierce the end of an egg, and drop it in the water and start your timer. The pushpin pierce gives the pressure in the heated egg somewhere to go. You might also want a drop of vinegar in the boil, but I can’t stand to be around the stuff. I found it fine without.

At the timer’s beep, remove the egg and place it in the cool bath. I use a tablespoon to keep my fingers from the scalding liquid.

After a minute, crack and remove the shell. Use the cool water to help you. I found the membrane and made easy work of it.

Finishing

At this point, be creative. I added the egg to a hamburger roll and had the most delicious explosion of yolk. What will you do?

Maybe some very thin sliced cucumber or tomato? A delicious small batch ketchup? Rooster sauce? Salt and pepper and nothing? Asparagus? A simple spoon into the chamber? A curry of rice and chicken? Sautéed mixed vegetables? A cheesesteak? The yolk would be so incredibly complimentary to a crisp piece of bacon. Since I’m mostly vegetarian, those suggestions would just be for you. 🙂

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Making Sense of the Google Chromebook (September 3rd in Ewing)

Presenting by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
Presenting by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

“Making Sense of the Google Chromebook” Free Computer Program September 3

20110805
Color study (Photo credit: lemasney)

Ewing, NJ:   “Why would I want a laptop that only runs a browser?”  This is the critical question New Jersey technology consultant and graphic designer John LeMasney will explore when he presents The Computer Learning Center’s newest, free Computer Tips and Tricks program on Tuesday, September 3.   “Making Sense of the Google Chromebook” will begin at 2 p.m. in the Ewing Senior and Community Center at 999 Lower Ferry Road. It will be preceded at 1:30 p.m. by a question and answer session during which the audience can direct computer questions to the CLC’s all-volunteer faculty.  Both programs are free and no prior registration is required.
            “Come learn why I stopped carrying around my MacBook Pro and exchanged it for a Chromebook, Google’s low-cost laptop that runs just one application,” says LeMasney. “Chrome begins to make a lot of sense when you look at several converging factors, namely, the increasing availability of high-speed connectivity, the emergence of applications and cloud-based services for real-world functionality, and the ability to stay connected in rather light ways.  I plan to look at both why the Chromebook works for me and the incredible power of this platform, but also why keeping a MacBook around still makes sense for some things.”
              John LeMasney describes himself as an artist, designer, technologist, and consultant whose passion is to help people use technology in sensible ways to enhance their work and life.   His career most recently included work as Manager of Technology Training at Rider University where he assisted faculty, staff and students in integrating technology into their work, classroom, and extracurricular activities.  A Fine Arts graduate of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, he holds a Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership with distinction from Rider University, as well as LPI Level One Certification in Linux Administration.
       The non-profit Computer Learning Center at Ewing, which sponsors the Computer Tips and Tricks programs as a public service, also offers a variety of PC and iPad computer skills courses for adults in central New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania.  For further information about the September 3 program, courses or directions, call 609-882-5086, 609-883-1776, Ext. 6205 or visit the CLC website at www.clcewing.org.

[flexiblemap address=”999 Lower Ferry Road, Ewing, NJ”]

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Teaching Scratch Training: Getting started with Block Programming

design hashtag
design hashtag

On Teaching Scratch Training

This afternoon, I taught some young, bright people how to get started with Scratch, MIT’s block programming application, at Princeton Public Library. Scratch training is a regular offering there. Block programming is a ‘lego-style’ approach to programming where you drag and drop functions from a predetermined set to develop a program. For example, you can have a character, called a sprite, dance back and forth on a canvas, jump when you hit a key on your keyboard, and flip when it touches another character.

Scratch Training (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Scratch Training (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Over a few weeks, I’m going to introduce the basics of Scratch, using their own great tutorial resources. My focus was their Scratch Cards, simple tutorials that allow beginners to quickly gain an understanding of things that you can do. http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Support/Scratch_Cards

Richard Stallman
Cover of Richard Stallma

I was particularly excited to share the easy way in which you can look at other Scratch projects that other scratchers have shared. You can visit those projects and play them as they were programmed, but you can also open them up in the editor, save a local copy to your own projects (called remixing) and begin making improvements of your own. I do this all the time in order to build upon the work of others, perhaps the key benefit of open source software, a key idea celebrated by Scratch. It makes sense that MIT manages this project, as Free Software and the idea of openness and transparency in software was born with MIT’s own Richard Stallman.

Next week, we’ll be coming back to share the projects that we came up with to explore how we can each use Scratch to scratch our own itch. Can’t wait!

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