This is my Curriculum Vitae. If it will help you to understand what I have accomplished, it’s in this list.
I was asked by faculty member at Rider University Susan Kadish to come to her class of education students in order to talk about how to use SmartBoards in the classroom. I had a lot of fun, and enjoyed sharing what I know about how to use interactive whiteboards.
Presentation: http://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0Ad-YsRMv5bPqZGNrZm05ZndfMjc5ZDRzMmc1Zm0&hl=en
Okay, it’s April 1st, so I figured I’d play with a little visual foolery. With some inspiration from Shannon O’ Connor, who contributed a photo of a tower with a tree growing out of it (what kind of neglect does it take for a full sized tree to grow on top of a building, I ask you?) so I figured I’d mash up some architecture and nature. So here I have an urban apartment building/townhouse which I’m clearly mislabeling as a brownstone, painted on a brown stone. I haven’t decided yet whether it’s just a painted facade or whether you can actually enter it. I like to think that someone walks up to it, tries to enter, and grabs an image of a doorknob. April Fools!
So, in Inkscape, I imported two images from MorgueFile, one of the apartment building, and one of a massive rock in the middle of a desert. The boulder had a man standing in front of it for scale, and he was about one eighth of its height. I bitmap traced both images, placed them on top of one another, then painted them with the calligraphy tool, the eyedropper, and the palette. I added a gradient based background, built a happy faced sun out of stacked, blurred ellipses and text, and added some surf crashing with the calligraphy tool. So there you have it, a ‘brown stone’ by the beach. Thanks to Shannon for the inspiration, and to you for taking the time to look.
Date: March 30th, 2010
Venue: Library 227
Abstract: A general overview of Smart Technologies.
Presentation: http://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0Ad-YsRMv5bPqZGNrZm05ZndfMjc5ZDRzMmc1Zm0&hl=en
Commentary and notes:
So, like many of Gen X, I was highly influenced by the introduction of Pac Man, and feel like the colors, sounds, and excitement that came over me the first time I saw it changed me in ways that I didn’t know until I started to study design. I was never particularly good at the game, and still I have trouble getting past the first level before losing interest. The first time I saw the game, it was inside a Wendy’s Hamburgers in Northeast Philly. It was about the size of a dishwasher, doubled as a table, and had a short queue waiting to play it. The version I play now is free and exists on my phone. It really is the end times.
In Inkscape, I started by making the simple ellipse, rectangle, and Bezier shapes for the ghost outline. I combined the rectangle and Bezier path, the duplicated and flipped that shape to create the back of the ghost “skirt” In fact, two more dupes were made in order to create the 3d effect of the skirt. I found a public domain skull and bitmap traced it and carved it down to just the eyes and nose, then added it to the ghost. Then I added the candy coating effect. I duplicated the ghost 3 times and affected the color to match the Pac Man colors. As a final touch, I added the final frame of the Pac Man sprite (when he is captured) to the background. I hope you enjoyed it!
If you’ve ever been to one of my workshops on open source graphics apps, you likely saw me use this technique there as a way to demonstrate the power of the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). In the GIMP, this is a technique that involves layer masks, blurring, brushwork, image scaling, and guidelines as a way of believably merging one recognizable face onto another becognizable head. The GIMP based composite image is here. I decided that I’d try to do the same technique in Inkscape, and found this attempt to be fairly quick and fairly successful.
Date: Thursday, March 11th, 2010
Venue: CJRLC Tech Committee, Princeton Public Library, Princeton, NJ
“Presentation Abstract:
During this overview John LeMasney predicts what will happen in the next 5 years of Mobile Computing. Attendees will learn about the state of mobile computing, up and coming applications, and the trends that are affecting mobile platforms.
By the end of the session, the following topics will have been discussed:
Presentation: http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=0Ad-YsRMv5bPqZGNrZm05ZndfMjI0ZHp0azdoZGg&hl=en&loop=true&autoStart=true
