Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Book of Dates (1752-2111)

This booklet of dates started as a Java programming practice exercise.  I expanded on a small example program that would create a one-month calendar when a month and year were specified by the user.  Instead of one month, I had my program output a full 359 years calendars.

The raw data wasn't very usable, so I formatted it such that four years dates at a time would fit on a printed page.  In the outside margin of each page I specified the dates covered.  The position of this indicator is an indicator of itself - at the beginning of the booklet it is near the top of the page, but by the last page it has moved nearly to the bottom.

To complete the package I wrote up the results of some calendar research I had done, added a colophon and the Java code, and turned the whole thing into a PDF.

Friday, February 23, 2007

George Washington Quotation

I saw this statement for the first time on a framed print in a stairwell in Washington Hall at Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania.  I was there for a couple nights on a work trip, and the statement seemed so apropos that I took a picture.  About a year later I was in an office where my coworkers needed to hear something like this, so I printed it, framed it, and hung it on my cubical wall (the original is in storage right now; this is a rendering with a little more texture to the background).

I'm not sure that it triggered any profound changes, but I am sure that everyone got the point.