Just a quick note, but I have created a Flickr set which contains some of the generative graphics I have been creating using canvas, JavaScript and EaselJS.
You can view the set here.
I havent released all of the code used to create all of the examples, but I will release the code / examples as I finish them. Ill post new images on the set whenever I create something I think is interesting.
Web Accessibility Specialist at Modis in Wilmington, DE (long-term contract). Modis is seeking aWeb Accessibility Specialistfor a long term contract position with their industry leading client.The Accessibility Specialist will be responsible for identifying and suggesting potential solutions for accessibility violations based on W3C WCAG 2.0 standards.
Web Accessibility Specialist at DeVry University, Wood Dale, Illinois. The primary purpose of this position is to consult with course developers on the guidelines and application of web accessibility to online courses created in Kinect. This includes researching section 508 and determining enhancements needed to course structure and media.
Accessibility Product Manager at RIM (BlackBerry) in Canada (Waterloo, Toronto, Ottawa). The Accessibility team is responsible for ensuring BlackBerry products and services are usable and accessible by the widest possible audience. This includes researching, specifying, designing and driving through to implementation various internal and external accessibility solutions. The successful candidate will be the voice of the customer and responsible for driving, from concept to implementation, emergency access BlackBerry solutions that meet the needs of persons with disabilities, wireless carrier partners and applicable legislation.
Accessibility Practice Lead, Atlanta, GA, 6-month contract. Collaborate with the User Experience and Development teams in planning, documenting and testing usable accessibility compliant interfaces. Proactively determine process, efficiencies, patterns, training and communication opportunities to improve our online experience for all users. Present and conduct training sessions for various teams on web accessibility process, planning, documentation and testing. Complete audits and test current and new products for compliance. Draft and maintain standards documents and remain abreast of trends and developments in the area of web and software accessibility.
Watch “The Zen of HTML5″ on the Opera Developer Network, with loads of resources to get you going. (“Get you going” in a “get you started” way, not in a viagra way.)
http://www.portalprogramas.com/software-libre/premios/software-libre-revolucionario
Blender download and info page:
http://gratis.portalprogramas.com/Blender.html
The award - 300 euro - has been received and will be spent on our documentation project, especially for improving our wiki.blender.org website.
Thanks!
Ton Roosendaal
23-1-2011
http://www.portalprogramas.com/software-libre/premios/software-libre-revolucionario
This morning Mo’Nique, last year’s best supporting actress, announced
the Oscar nominees for next month’s 83rd annual Academy Awards. While there’s
no Inconvenient Truth nor anyone
bragging they’re the
greenest director of all time, we managed to find some sustainable messages
in the contenders for best picture.
127 Hours: James
Franco stars in this grisly film about the mountain climber who had to cut off
his own arm since it was stuck under a rock. As long as he packed it in and
packed it out (his litter, not his arm, silly!), this sounds pretty green to
me. (For reals, though, Franco’s 2008 New Year’s Resolution was
to walk more and rely less on his car.)
Black Swan: Natalie
Portman, star of this creepy ballet flick, is a longtime vegan and green
darling, and she said
the same of director Darren Aronofsky: “Darren is a huge environmentalist
and talks about it all the time.” He forbade plastic water bottles on the set,
and Kleen Kanteen provided the cast and crew with reusable ones. Because it’s
important to be hydrated before any self-mutilation.
Inception: Sleeping
is a great way to save energy, right? But seriously, the Prius-driving Leo DiCaprio is uber-green.
(Remember The Eleventh Hour? Yeah ...
unfortunately we do too.) Juno darling Ellen Page is no slouch, either—she appeared
in a video promo for 350.org’s day of climate action last year.
The Fighter: I’ll
admit it, there aren’t a lot of green connections with this boxing flick ...
although aforementioned green director Darren Aronofsky was once at its helm.
And you can count Marky Mark as yet another knock-out with an awful
eco-thriller in his past (The Happening).
Co-stars Christian Bale dabbled
in vegetarianism, and Amy Adams took
reusable bags with her to the grocery store (hey, I’m trying here, people!).
The Kids Are All Right:
Annette Bening (who played a green activist in 1995’s An American President) and Julianne Moore star in this comedy-drama
about a lesbian couple and their kids—and a recent
study suggests the LGBT community is greener than its hetero counterparts. And
star Mark Ruffalo’s recently been in the news for his anti-fracking
activism.
The King’s Speech: This period drama chronicles how King George VI
overcame his stutter. It stars Colin Firth, who just might be one half of a new
green power couple: “With friends he opened an
eco-friendly store in west London,” reports Financial Times. And his wife Livia Guggioli has promised to only
wear sustainable fashion on the red carpet.
The Social Network:
Justin Timberlake brought sexy back, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in
the name of clean water, and opened a “green” golf
course? Add him as a friend already. (Same for Rashida Jones—her 2011
New Year’s resolution is to start
composting.) And in real life, Greenpeace gave Facebook a not-so-friendly
poke for using
coal to power its data centers.
Toy Story 3: Clearly
the take-home message of this animated blockbuster is that reusing and
recycling unwanted crap is way better than sending it to the scary incinerator.
Did I say “clearly”? In any case, Tom Hanks (the voice of Woody) volunteers for The Nature
Conservancy, making him our favorite deputy.
True Grit: The Coen brothers directed this John Wayne remake. (Perhaps
you remember their maybe-it’s-a-metaphor-for-climate-change film from three years ago, No Country for
Old Men, or their definitely-mocking-clean-coal video from last year?) The Coens have made composting
and recycling a priority on sets before—they composted 74 percent of the
waste from A Serious Man and recycled
another 6 percent. Keep it up, bros.
Winter’s Bone:
This “haunting
yet beautiful” drama is set in a poor rural community in the Ozarks, “where
drug production and trafficking [are] just as lucrative as livestock and
farming,” writes
one reviewer. With zero farmwashing—instead, broken farm equipment sits in front of houses—perhaps it shines
a dull flickery light on the downsides of Big Ag?
Best Supporting Actor
The Town: This bank-heist
action flick features Ben Affleck as both star and director. As one-half of the greenish Bennifer,
he’s campaigned for Defenders of Wildlife, been in a Live Earth PSA, and dressed
like an ear of corn to promote flex fuels. Co-star (and Mad Men hottie) Jon Hamm voiced green Mercedes-Benz ads during
last year’s Oscars and made the regrettable career decision of starring in
an eco-flick.
Finally, Blake
Lively shops green and has urged her Gossip
Girl co-stars to switch to reusable mugs.
Best Feature Documentary
Gasland: This puppy started getting buzz at Sundance almost a year ago. It’s a scary, compelling look at fracking (hydraulic fracturing), a chemical-intensive method of extracting natural gas, and its negative health effects on the people who live nearby. If “flammable tap water” sounds familiar, it’s probably thanks to Gasland.
Inside Job: Tesla-driving
Matt Damon narrates this documentary about the current economic meltdown. Damon’s
dulcet tones have also graced
green docs Running the Sahara and
Journey to Planet Earth, and he
started Water.org, which aims to get clean drinking water to people in
developing countries.
Waste Land: Trash? Art? Global issues? Yes. Photographer Vik Muniz went to the world’s biggest landfill in Rio de
Janeiro to create mixed-media portraits of the locals who pick through trash there. Then he photographed the portraits—which he made with trash from that very landfill—and sold them, donating his profits back to the locals. For a topic that sounds smelly and ugly, the film sounds uplifting and personal.
Related Links:
Flava Flav opens fried chicken chain, threatens the Colonel
‘Portlandia’ recap: Farming is magic!
All this talk about Taco Bell’s beef-spiked stew of fillers and flavor “enhancers” got me to wondering: what other weird stuff lurks in the fast food giant’s delicacies? Luckily, Taco Bell provides a convenient online ingredients list for its products. Let’s peruse it, shall we?
Let’s start with a rather straight-forward dish: steak. On the rare occasions I cook steak, here’s what I do.
Ingredients are pretty basic: steak, sea salt, pepper, a high-quality
cooking fat, and a few simple substances (wine, garlic, shallots) for
sauce. Here’s Taco Bell’s version:
Beef,
Water, Seasoning [Modified Potato Starch, Salt, Autolyzed Yeast
Extract, Dextrose, Maltodextrin, Carrageenan, Paprika, Garlic Powder,
Onion Powder, Spices, Hot Sauce (Aged Red Peppers, Vinegar, Salt),
Citric Acid, Sugar, Dehydrated Vinegar, Soybean Oil, Natural Flavors,
Soybean Lecithin], Sodium Phosphates. Sauce: Water, Seasoning (Salt,
Caramel Color, Modified Food Starch, Autolyzed Yeast Extract,
Maltodextrin, Dextrose, Garlic Powder, Xanthan Gum, Onion Powder, Beef
Stock, Vinegar Solids, Natural Flavors, Citric Acid, Sugar, Thiamine
Hydrochloride, Succinic Acid, Soy Lecithin, Beef Fat, Potassium Sorbate)
Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, BHT. CONTAINS SOYBEANS
Wow
—not just dehydrated vinegar, but also vinegar solids. Both concepts
blow my mind. You can turn vinegar into a solid substance? You can
dehydrate it? And the two things are different? Who’s Taco Bell’s head
chef, Ferran Adria?
Then there’s the presence of dextrose, a form of sugar. By itself, dextrose
evidently doesn’t do the trick for Taco Bell’s food engineers, so they
have to add maltodextrin. What is malodextrin, you ask? Here’s Wikipedia:
Maltodextrin is a polysaccharide that is used as a food additive. It is produced from starch by partial hydrolysis and is usually found as a creamy-white hygroscopic spraydried powder. Maltodextrin is easily digestible, being absorbed as rapidly as glucose, and might be either moderately sweet or almost flavorless. It is commonly used for the production of natural sodas and candy.
Sodas,
candy, and ... steak?
Then there’s that lashing of heart-ruining partially hydrogenated soybean oil in the steak sauce. Nice job, guys!
Clearly, my pedestrian steak-cooking style needs a kick in the pants
from those Taco Bell kitchen wizards.
Now let’s move to “southwestern chicken”: now, with mixed triglycerides!
Chicken
Breast Meat With Rib Meat, Water, Seasoning [Salt, Maltodextrin,
Spices, Garlic Powder, Chili Pepper, Paprika, Onion Powder, Carrageenan,
Disodium Inosinate, Disodium Guanylate, Natural Flavoring, Mixed
Triglycerides, Yeast, Modified Corn Starch, Corn Syrup Solids, Yeast
Extract, Alginates (Sodium, Calcium And/Or Ammonium), Cellulose, Calcium
Chloride, Sodium Benzoate Used To Protect Quality, Not More Than 2%
Silicon Dioxide Added To Prevent Caking, Soybean Oil], Modified Food
Starch, Sodium Phosphates Soy Lecithin (Used As A Processing Aid).
CONTAINS SOYBEANS
Again,
we get something usually thought of as liquid—this time, corn syrup— in solid form. And again, we find echoes of one ingredient in another:
not just disodium inosinate, but also disodium guanylate—both of
which seem to be normally used with some form of monosodium glutamate (MSG). I
think my favorite ingredient of all is this: “Sodium Benzoate Used To
Protect Quality, Not More Than 2% Silicon Dioxide Added To Prevent
Caking.” Because, you know, I think we can all agree it sucks when southwestern
chicken starts caking. Forget that research suggests that sodium
benzoate may cause “serious cell damage.”
I
could go on for a while like this. In a pork dish, we find “Roast Pork
Flavor,” which consists of “Water, Flavor, Salt, Autolyzed Yeast
Extract, Sunflower Oil, Propylene Glycol, Natural Smoke Flavor, Xanthan
Gum.” (I salute the use of “flavor” as an ingredient.) That same dish
contains “Pork Conditioner” (Modified Food Starch), and “Grilled Flavor”
(Maltodextrin, Salt, Grill Flavor [from Vegetable Oil].”
But
perhaps the biggest engineering triumph of all lies in the dessert
menu. Taco Bell does feel the need to include actual pork amid
the “Roast Pork Flavor.” Even its inamous “seasoned beef” contains 34 percent beef. Truth-in-advertising attorneys take note: Taco has successfully engineered the strawberries
out of the “Strawberry Frutista.” I’m not sure what a frutista is; the
word doesn’t exist outside the confines Taco Bell-world. But I know what
a strawberry is, and I don’t see even one on this ingredient list.
Treated
Water, Sugar, Citric Acid, Natural Flavor, Yucca Extract, Salt, Red Dye
#40, Sodium Benzoate (Preserves Freshness), Potassium Sorbate
(Preserves Freshness)
The engineers failed miserably, though, with tomatoes. Ingredients:
Tomatoes
Perhaps since agreeing to pay an extra penny a pound for tomatoes from Florida after a boycott from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Taco Bell execs found some grudging respect for the ingredient and waved its engineers back. Would that other common foodstuffs got similar treatment from the fast food industry.
Related Links:
Flava Flav opens fried chicken chain, threatens the Colonel
Is Taco Bell’s beef ‘filler’ the healthiest thing it sells?
Two rules for industry in Iceland: Don’t
piss off the elves,
and do NOT mess with Bjork. She is the Hugo Chavez of Iceland, and if you take
her country’s geothermal natural resources, she will threaten you with expropriation
of nearly half a billion dollars of your company’s assets. Also, she
is friends with the first openly gay head of state
in modern times, Johanna Sigurdardottir, who recently stood shoulder to
shoulder with the pop queen to sing protest songs outside of Iceland’s
parliament building. Their bird-like caterwaul was specifically aimed at
Canadian geothermal company Magma Energy, which is trying to seal a deal on
Iceland’s largest private geothermal company, HS Orka.
A fountain of blood in the shape of a
girl: Bjork’s on a quest to see Iceland take back its geothermal resources, after
selling off 9 percent in a deal authorized by Iceland’s previous (now extremely
unpopular) government. Her latest move: a petition signed by
47,000 people—nearly a sixth of the entire population of her
adorable little Christmas village of a country.
Nature forges a deal to raise wonderful
hell: Iceland could be the only developed country in the world to skip the
industrial revolution and go straight to whatever sustainable post-carbon
paradise lies beyond it, says Bjork, but only if they keep their
geothermal resources intact. The country already gets the overwhelming
majority of its primary energy from clean, renewable geothermal
power. This wellspring of heat has also been proposed as a way to help
the country rebuild its shattered economy, which won’t work if they
auction off the underlying resource off like some kind of resource-cursed
developing world basket case.
If you complain once more, you’ll meet an
army of me: Bjork
publicly threatened Magma Energy with expropriation
of its assets—that means the Icelandic government would just take
back the geothermal power plants, but maybe pay for them if they’re feeling
charitable. Iceland has
no navy, though, so this might not be the best idea.
Regardless, the latest development is
that Iceland’s government is about to give Magma Energy a talking to.
The obviously frustrated company has said it was “promised” that the
deal would undergo no more reviews, but they should have known not to tangle
with a woman who controls a robot tank
with teeth.
You shouldn’t let poets lie to you: After her
meeting with the prime minister, Bjork told reporters: “Basically we are
in agreement on the issue, but it’s always a question of methods. In plain
language—it’s a question of how to deal with the system, the
bureaucracy.”
We’re just hoping she understands
“the issue” and “the bureaucracy” better than she
understands the magic of television:
Related Links:
Carnivorous plant goes batshit for bat shit
Listen up, hipsters: Your next home will arrive on a truck
