The other night, I was just asked the question... Who am I? I generally respond to this question in the form of a résumé... in that I tend to label myself by what I do... much like Adam Sandler in the film Anger Management when Jack Nicholson's character asks "Who are you?" and he commences by telling what he does... to which Nicholson replies "I asked you who you are, not what you do..." to which Sandler just gets frustrated and starts to lose it a bit. By the way, I have actually been through anger management (many years ago) and I am apparently much like Adam Sandler's character in that film in that respect, prior to his being able to express his anger... so my Girlfriend tells me. I haven't been able to get angry in a very long time... which is apparently something I need to work on... DAMMIT! :p
I've been a lot of things career and job wise... very few of which I've actually been qualified for. When asked if I can do something I've always emphatically agreed that yes, I can do that... which is true... if I don't know how to do something I'll just learn it on my own. I've always been a very quick learner and despite my prestigious collection of degrees... they've really never directly helped my career.
Some of the previous careers I've held include: photographer, photographic re-toucher, fine artist ( I had gallery representation for awhile in Chicago, had a number of shows... internationally, too and was also a portrait artist on the side for a number of years), I worked for the theatre (set design/construction and did a bit of writing and acting) for a number of years, mostly in Indianapolis and Chicago (yes, I was pretty much broke during those years, but it was also one of the happier times of my life. When I was attending university, I worked as a bread baker and barista (I was damn good at that j.o.b., too! ...if I do say so myself... much better than the $8.50 I was making an hour, at least).
I was also a manager for a health foods supermarket for awhile, which led to my becoming their chief graphic designer for over ten years and helped them to become the international leader that they've since become, by opening up the first international location in Toronto. After that I continued to freelance and attend university and eventually worked for CitiGroup as a vice-president and was quite successful (again, no qualifications, but I was consistently one of the top producers despite that slight handicap). I was a consultant (computer, business), software developer, a G-man for several years, website designer, bread baker, and administrator.
Anyway, I currently consider myself a freelance website designer and plan on doing that for quite awhile... that is, until I become interested in something else, or am offered a new challenge. Whenever I hired employees I always looked beyond their résumé and focused on who they were more than what they've done, that's what is most important.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Hybrid Cars
Last night Diana and I rode in a new hybrid car. Diana first responded by mentioning that the car made hardly any discernible noise. We were both amazed at how powerful the car was and how well it drove. If it weren't for the fact that we both feel that owning a car in the city is just a pain in the ass, we would want one of our own!
Hex Colors De-mystified
Web colors are colors used in designing web pages, and the methods for describing and specifying those colors.
Authors of web pages have a variety of options available for specifying colors for elements of web documents. Colors may be specified as an RGB triplet in hexadecimal format (a hex triplet); they may also be specified according to their common English names in some cases. Often a color tool or other graphics software is used to generate color values.
The first versions of Mosaic and Netscape Navigator used the X11 color names as the basis for their color lists, as both started as X Window System applications.
Web colors have an unambiguous colorimetric definition, sRGB, which relates the chromaticities of a particular phosphor set, a given transfer curve, adaptive whitepoint, and viewing conditions. These have been chosen to be similar to many real-world monitors and viewing conditions, so that even without color management rendering is fairly close to the specified values. However, user agents vary in the fidelity with which they represent the specified colors. More advanced user agents use color management to provide better color fidelity; this is particularly important for Web-to-print applications.
Hex triplet
A hex triplet is a six-digit, three-byte hexadecimal number used in HTML, CSS, SVG, and other computing applications, to represent colors. The bytes represent the red, green and blue components of the color. One byte represents a number in the range 00 to FF (in hexadecimal notation), or 0 to 255 in decimal notation. This represents the least (0) to the most (255) intensity of each of the color components. The hex triplet is formed by concatenating three bytes in hexadecimal notation, in the following order:
Byte 1: red value (color type red)
Byte 2: green value (color type green)
Byte 3: blue value (color type blue)
For example, consider the color where the red/green/blue values are decimal numbers: red=36, green=104, blue=160 (a greyish-blue color). The decimal numbers 36, 104 and 160 are equivalent to the hexadecimal numbers 24, 68 and A0 respectively. The hex triplet is obtained by concatenating the 6 hexadecimal digits together, 2468A0 in this example.
Note that if any one of the three color values is less than 16 (decimal) or 10 (hex), it must be represented with a leading zero so that the triplet always has exactly six digits. For example, the decimal triplet 4, 8, 16 would be represented by the hex digits 04, 08, 10, forming the hex triplet 040810.
The number of colors that can be represented by this system is
256 \times 256 \times 256 = 16,777,216
An abbreviated, three (hexadecimal) digit form is sometimes used.[1] Expanding this form to the six-digit form is as simple as doubling each digit: 09C becomes 0099CC. This allows each color value to cover its full range from 00 to FF. However, the three-digit form is not interpreted correctly in some versions of Opera.
Converting RGB to hexadecimal
Converting a decimal RGB value to a hexadecimal value is fairly straightforward. RGB values are usually given in the 0-255 range; if they are in the 0-1 range, the values are multiplied by 255 before conversion. This number divided by 16 (integer division; ignoring any remainder) gives us the first hexadecimal digit (between 0 and F, where the letters A to F represent the numbers 10 to 15. See hexadecimal for more details). The remainder gives us the second hexadecimal digit. For instance the RGB value 201 divides into 12 groups of 16, thus the first digit is C. A remainder of 9 gives us the hexadecimal number C9. This process is repeated for each of the three color values. Most modern operating systems have a built-in calculator to perform conversions between number bases and this can also be done with some hand-held calculators. This task can also be carried out using various web resources.
Web-safe color
Another set of 216 color values is commonly considered to be the "web-safe" color palette, developed at a time when many computer displays were only capable of displaying 256 colors. A set of colors was needed that could be shown without dithering on 256-color displays; the number 216 was chosen partly because computer operating systems customarily reserved sixteen to twenty colors for their own use; it was also selected because it allows exactly six shades each of red, green, and blue (6 × 6 × 6 = 216).
The list of colors is often presented as if it has special properties that render them immune to dithering. In fact, on 256-color displays applications can set a palette of any selection of colors that they choose, dithering the rest. These colors were chosen specifically because they matched the palettes selected by the then leading browser applications. Fortunately, there were not radically different palettes in use in different popular browsers.
"Web-safe" colors had a flaw in that, on systems such as X11 where the palette is shared between applications, smaller color cubes (5x5x5 or 4x4x4) were often allocated by browsers — thus, the "web safe" colors would actually dither on such systems. Better results were obtained by providing an image with a larger range of colors and allowing the browser to quantize the color space if needed, rather than suffer the quality loss of a double quantization.
As of 2007, personal computers typically have at least 16-bit color and usually 24-bit (TrueColor). Even mobile devices have at least 16-bit color, driven by the inclusion of cameras on cellphones. The use of "web-safe" colors has fallen into practical disuse, but persisted in culture.
The web-safe palette system persists as being the palette with the greatest number of distinct colors, where each color can be distinguished individually by human eyes. This led to the use of web-safe colors in anti-phishing systems.
The "web-safe" colors do not all have names, but each can be specified by an RGB triplet. Below are the values for the 6 shades of each color out of 256 possible color shades.
Six shades of each color digit
hexadecimal decimal
0 00 0
3 33 51
6 66 102
9 99 153
C or (12) CC 204
F or (15) FF 255
The following table shows all of the "web-safe" colors, underlining the really-safe colors. The lack of gamma correction means that the six desired intensities 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, and 100% are displayed as 0%, 2%, 10%, 28%, 57%, and 100% on a Windows standard 2.5 gamma CRT or LCD, making most colors very dark. The intensities at the low end of the range, especially 0 and 3, are nearly indistinguishable from each other:
Safest web colors
Designers were often encouraged to stick to these 216 "web-safe" colors in their websites; however, 8-bit color displays were much more common when the 216-color palette was developed than they are now. David Lehn and Hadley Stern have since discovered that only 22 of the 216 colors in the web-safe palette are reliably displayed without inconsistent remapping on 16-bit computer displays. They called these 22 colors the "really safe" palette; it consists mainly of shades of green and yellow, as can be seen in the table above, where the "really safe" colors are underlined.
Authors of web pages have a variety of options available for specifying colors for elements of web documents. Colors may be specified as an RGB triplet in hexadecimal format (a hex triplet); they may also be specified according to their common English names in some cases. Often a color tool or other graphics software is used to generate color values.
The first versions of Mosaic and Netscape Navigator used the X11 color names as the basis for their color lists, as both started as X Window System applications.
Web colors have an unambiguous colorimetric definition, sRGB, which relates the chromaticities of a particular phosphor set, a given transfer curve, adaptive whitepoint, and viewing conditions. These have been chosen to be similar to many real-world monitors and viewing conditions, so that even without color management rendering is fairly close to the specified values. However, user agents vary in the fidelity with which they represent the specified colors. More advanced user agents use color management to provide better color fidelity; this is particularly important for Web-to-print applications.
Hex triplet
A hex triplet is a six-digit, three-byte hexadecimal number used in HTML, CSS, SVG, and other computing applications, to represent colors. The bytes represent the red, green and blue components of the color. One byte represents a number in the range 00 to FF (in hexadecimal notation), or 0 to 255 in decimal notation. This represents the least (0) to the most (255) intensity of each of the color components. The hex triplet is formed by concatenating three bytes in hexadecimal notation, in the following order:
Byte 1: red value (color type red)
Byte 2: green value (color type green)
Byte 3: blue value (color type blue)
For example, consider the color where the red/green/blue values are decimal numbers: red=36, green=104, blue=160 (a greyish-blue color). The decimal numbers 36, 104 and 160 are equivalent to the hexadecimal numbers 24, 68 and A0 respectively. The hex triplet is obtained by concatenating the 6 hexadecimal digits together, 2468A0 in this example.
Note that if any one of the three color values is less than 16 (decimal) or 10 (hex), it must be represented with a leading zero so that the triplet always has exactly six digits. For example, the decimal triplet 4, 8, 16 would be represented by the hex digits 04, 08, 10, forming the hex triplet 040810.
The number of colors that can be represented by this system is
256 \times 256 \times 256 = 16,777,216
An abbreviated, three (hexadecimal) digit form is sometimes used.[1] Expanding this form to the six-digit form is as simple as doubling each digit: 09C becomes 0099CC. This allows each color value to cover its full range from 00 to FF. However, the three-digit form is not interpreted correctly in some versions of Opera.
Converting RGB to hexadecimal
Converting a decimal RGB value to a hexadecimal value is fairly straightforward. RGB values are usually given in the 0-255 range; if they are in the 0-1 range, the values are multiplied by 255 before conversion. This number divided by 16 (integer division; ignoring any remainder) gives us the first hexadecimal digit (between 0 and F, where the letters A to F represent the numbers 10 to 15. See hexadecimal for more details). The remainder gives us the second hexadecimal digit. For instance the RGB value 201 divides into 12 groups of 16, thus the first digit is C. A remainder of 9 gives us the hexadecimal number C9. This process is repeated for each of the three color values. Most modern operating systems have a built-in calculator to perform conversions between number bases and this can also be done with some hand-held calculators. This task can also be carried out using various web resources.
Web-safe color
Another set of 216 color values is commonly considered to be the "web-safe" color palette, developed at a time when many computer displays were only capable of displaying 256 colors. A set of colors was needed that could be shown without dithering on 256-color displays; the number 216 was chosen partly because computer operating systems customarily reserved sixteen to twenty colors for their own use; it was also selected because it allows exactly six shades each of red, green, and blue (6 × 6 × 6 = 216).
The list of colors is often presented as if it has special properties that render them immune to dithering. In fact, on 256-color displays applications can set a palette of any selection of colors that they choose, dithering the rest. These colors were chosen specifically because they matched the palettes selected by the then leading browser applications. Fortunately, there were not radically different palettes in use in different popular browsers.
"Web-safe" colors had a flaw in that, on systems such as X11 where the palette is shared between applications, smaller color cubes (5x5x5 or 4x4x4) were often allocated by browsers — thus, the "web safe" colors would actually dither on such systems. Better results were obtained by providing an image with a larger range of colors and allowing the browser to quantize the color space if needed, rather than suffer the quality loss of a double quantization.
As of 2007, personal computers typically have at least 16-bit color and usually 24-bit (TrueColor). Even mobile devices have at least 16-bit color, driven by the inclusion of cameras on cellphones. The use of "web-safe" colors has fallen into practical disuse, but persisted in culture.
The web-safe palette system persists as being the palette with the greatest number of distinct colors, where each color can be distinguished individually by human eyes. This led to the use of web-safe colors in anti-phishing systems.
The "web-safe" colors do not all have names, but each can be specified by an RGB triplet. Below are the values for the 6 shades of each color out of 256 possible color shades.
Six shades of each color digit
hexadecimal decimal
0 00 0
3 33 51
6 66 102
9 99 153
C or (12) CC 204
F or (15) FF 255
The following table shows all of the "web-safe" colors, underlining the really-safe colors. The lack of gamma correction means that the six desired intensities 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, and 100% are displayed as 0%, 2%, 10%, 28%, 57%, and 100% on a Windows standard 2.5 gamma CRT or LCD, making most colors very dark. The intensities at the low end of the range, especially 0 and 3, are nearly indistinguishable from each other:
Safest web colors
Designers were often encouraged to stick to these 216 "web-safe" colors in their websites; however, 8-bit color displays were much more common when the 216-color palette was developed than they are now. David Lehn and Hadley Stern have since discovered that only 22 of the 216 colors in the web-safe palette are reliably displayed without inconsistent remapping on 16-bit computer displays. They called these 22 colors the "really safe" palette; it consists mainly of shades of green and yellow, as can be seen in the table above, where the "really safe" colors are underlined.
Starting a new business
I'm starting yet another business. I've done a fair amount of research on the industry that I'm going to venture into and I'm working on a formal business plan of 25 pages or so including industry projections, costs, market, what makes my business idea unique and why I will be successful at it.
This blog is now listed on: Dmegs Web Directory
By the way...
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