adam rowe

the four laws

adam — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 02:39:56 +0000

Remember the Four Laws.
Remember the Order of the Four Laws.
This is the Third Law.
Never forget the Four Laws.

Please note that this list does not include the apocryphal Fifth Law, which states, “There are only Four Laws.”

martian / alien painting

adam — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 21:56:17 +0000

Normal 80s kids had Legos. My brother and I had Construx. I had the Space Series stuff that glowed in the dark, and Jerry had the purple Alien stuff. It didn’t seem odd at the time, but since he had two of these figures, he named one Alien and the other Martian. This painting serves as a monument to the days before our minds were clouded with things such as sub-classes and parent categories.
The text(?) below the portraits are from 2 different decals (and yes, I know that one is just the other upside-down) from the Battlestrike set. I like to believe one reads martian and the other alien.

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the carnival of the animals puppets

adam — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 20:03:39 +0000

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These are puppets I made of some of the animals in The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns. They are rod puppets which double as shadow puppets, and are made with pieces of recycled magazines and cardboard.

I: Introduction et marche royale du lion

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II: Poules et coqs

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III: Hémiones / VIII: Personnages à longues oreilles

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V: L’éléphant

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VI: Kangourous

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XIII: Le cygne

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reading the neverending story listening to passion

adam — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 04:05:58 +0000

The Neverending Story was not new to me circa 1998, as it was read to me several times when I was little. However, since all memory of it had been burninated away by the movie The Neverending Story (Ul de Rico notwithstanding), I felt the need to revisit this epic while listening to Peter Gabriel’s Passion, of which I had only heard a couple of tracks.

Passion is based on a soundtrack for a movie which I refuse to see, mostly because I only want to imagine Falkor soaring through Fantastica when I hear Of These, Hope.

There is enough variety in the music to span the story, and the references to many types of eastern music allude to the cosmopolitan aspect of Michael Ende’s world. The music can be repeated as long as it takes to read the story. The match is perfect as far as I am concerned.

book soundtracks

adam — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 04:00:47 +0000

There have been a number of books I have read while listening to music. Each case involved music and a story which were more or less new to me, which had the potential to ruin either. They may or may not work for other people, so I will try to explain why they worked for me and why I recommend them.

“>

Try them yourself and / or post your comments on the appropriate page.

how to make a rectangular tessellation using inkscape

adam — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 01:31:45 +0000

example of a tessellation

This is a step-by-step explanation of how to create a pattern which repeats infinitely on a plane using a rectangular grid. I use Inkscape in this explanation, but the principles apply to any program (or manual creation, which is also a lot of fun). This works best with line drawings.

If you’re not familiar with what makes a pattern tessellate as opposed to repeat, think in terms of Pac-Man; when you go far enough to the right side, you come out the left side.

step 1

Start out with a new document. Any dimensions will work. For this example I created a ⅛″ grid on a 2″ square document.

step 2

Draw some objects. The more they break the boundaries of the canvas the better.

step 3

Draw a rectangle the same size as you canvas. You might want to make it a different color if your design is complex.

step 4

make sure you have snap to grid on
select all
group
copy & paste dragging rectangle created in previous step to all edges and corners of canvas (for a total of 8 pastes)

You should now have 9 copies of your original drawing in a 3 × 3 grid. If your drawing is opaque, some of the repetition will be obscured. Reduce the opacity of your original drawing to, say, 50% and start over.

step 5

draw another rectangle outlining your canvas
cut it
select all
group
paste in place
select the group you just created, then the rectangle you just pasted
set clip (object > clip > set)

Now your tessellation is ready to be repeated.
Note: If your original drawing is more than 2× the width and / or height of your canvas, you will need to paste your drawing additional times in step 4. I think these are the interesting tessellations because you have to see the pattern repeated many times in order to see the original design.

2006 halloween card

adam — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 17:38:54 +0000

For the 2006 Halloween card, we waited until Mikeal was out of town and actually rolled his house. His neighbors didn’t seem to mind that we were doing this in broad daylight. We cleaned up afterward, which I’m sure added to the shock of getting a postcard with your own house on it.

etsy listing 78176280

adam — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:09:23 +0000

swirl pattern 7143 stationery set: brown letter, envelope, and ink

pattern 7143

adam — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:08:11 +0000

Pattern 7143 is used in the following items on Etsy:

swirl pattern 7143 stationery set: brown letter, envelope, and ink

beyond the wall of sleep

adam — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 13:29:27 +0000

Download audio file (btwos2001-05-10.mp3)

A friend of a friend (Jym Davis) made a movie. This was the original title music for the original titles, neither of which are in the final movie. Here is the final version of the titles, sans my music, but with cool music from Kaveh Cohen.

This music was rendered with all original samples using an Ensoniq ASR-10 .