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alecatmew · 2 years

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QArt Code Signature Blocks

Oh boy, let me take you down the rabbit hole that keeps sneakily stealing hours of my life from me.

We’ll start with a topic I’ve covered a few times before:

Seals

I’ve written before about my mock sinograph signature – a pseudo Chinese-character sequence that I use to sign my artwork with.

Inktober piece with the latest version of my calligraphic sinograph

I have also signed my work in the past with a signature stamp that I picked up at a dollar store in Japan, that simply contained the character of my surname.

The first artwork I can find that uses the 林 stamp.

In the intervening times, I’ve experimented with laser engraving seals of my sinograph, and modifying its design. I briefly hit on a design I absolutely adored that incorporated “Alethea” into the character 鴨 (duck), which when put together with my surname 林 would have correspondingly given me “forest duck” as my signature. This would allude to the name of the chenonetta jubata in Chinese, nicely tying all of my identities together.

Seal script version of 林鴨

Unfortunately, a Mandarin-speaking coworker cautioned me against using 鴨 as a pseudonym. They informed me that when referring to people, “duck” is sometimes used as a euphemism for a male prostitute. So with that knowledge, I decided to fall back to my made-up characters.

Only a couple of pieces were signed with the calligraphic version of this signature before I reverted to my older signature.

When I made the most recent revision to my signature, I decided to get it professionally carved into soapstone, and had the company confirm that I wasn’t going to run into any similar embarrassing misunderstandings with the design. The actual seal carving ended up being very expensive (considering I could have just laser engraved it myself), but I valued the peace of mind that came with having someone knowledgable vetting it. Experiencing how the seal design transferred so cleanly with good quality seal paste (the ink used to stamp the blocks with) also unlocked the next step in my journey.

Soapstone chop and the stamped design

QArt Codes

Some time ago, I read this blog post about embedding images into QR codes. As a tl;dr, QR codes are made to be tolerant to damage. Most QR codes that contain logos in them just cover the data contained in the code and take advantage of the error-correcting algorithm to ensure the right values are read out. “QArt Codes”, on the other hand, use a provided image to generate a URL that naturally encodes to something that resembles the source image.

I can’t remember what led me to the article initially, it was a looooong time ago. I may have been working on a puzzle hunt for AVCon that used QR codes to log people’s progress and I wanted to embed the AVCon Invader logo into it (so some time around 2014). But the puzzle hunt, and QR codes in Aus generally didn’t catch on so the idea just got relegated to the back of my mind.

Still, QArt codes are super neat and I’m surprised I haven’t seen them in the wild more. Actually, I think the page that generated the codes was down during the rise of QR codes in the pandemic, so there was a bit of a missed window. But the page is back now, and you can play with making your own! Or if you want to play with the code there’s a standalone version you can run locally.

(Side note, when I was researching game-parsing screen readers to work on Ikalog stuff, I ran into this blog post by Up Banking. That’s the only QArt code that I’ve recognised in the wild to date)

Adding 2+2…

This is the post that lit the lightbulb in my head.

What do you guys think about the possibility of artists using small QR code’s as watermarks to link back to the artist? pic.twitter.com/9gk3a6GHhK

— matt (@MattikarpArt) March 28, 2021

I mean, having hit this point in my post it’s pretty obvious what we’re gonna do, right?

QArt Chopping and Changing

“So how did you lose hours of your life to this? There’s a page that generates them, you just put your picture in there and you’re done, right?”

Well, to start off with, as I mentioned above the page that generates them was actually not available for some time, so I had to mess around with the original QArt source code (with a few headaches) and then later had the fortune of running into the standalone version.

After that… I lost time to the search of perfection.

Here’s my first draft of a painterly QArt signature. The output of the QArt generator still had a lot of noise, so I used painterly brushstrokes to make the noise look more appealing. At this point I still only superficially appreciated the stuff in the article and while I knew about some areas that were more important to preserve than others I was mostly just drawing willy-nilly with the understanding that “QR codes can repair damaged data”.

It’s neat but it’s off-centre, it contains only my surname and it probably won’t scan properly when scaled down for overlaying on art.

I was satisfied for a while with the proof of concept, but later I started thinking about laser cutting myself a new signature chop anyway, as the soapstone one I’d purchased was too large to use on A4 and smaller art (the majority of my pieces!)

So I looked at the QR codes and realised that I should provide a source image that wouldn’t need to scale. I want to control the pixels of the code so I should provide a pixel art version of my signature.

Something like this. The QArt generator will try to respect the original colours of the pixels, but it almost always has to make compromises. The generator will put priority on preserving areas with full alpha, and will relegate its manipulations to transparent areas in the source image.

This provides an okayish output – it’s a good basis on which to paint over parts to arrive at a more aesthetically pleasing version.

I did do some test runs with this kind of “corrected” design and to my delight they did scan when stamped.

The seal paste that I originally got with my soapstone seal proved an excellent transfer medium for the design

However, I anticipate that the stamping process can be error prone and therefore it will be impossible to perfectly transfer the design. So I keep returning to these QArt codes to try to minimise the errors. First by lowering the amount of modifications that I make to the generated code…

Here’s a really tiny version where did some painting over the generated code but compromised a bit towards the lower area of the design.

Then, by changing the generation of the code itself.

One strategy was to reduce the area of the QR code that must be dedicated to my URL. I chose not to use a URL shortener. I intend to keep the chenonetta.com domain into the forseeable future but I can’t control what happens with any URL forwarding services.

I also opted to include the full http:// prefix in the URL. I did some playing around with readers and some automatically open pages if the URL starts with www. or ends with a .com but I didn’t want to rely on that behaviour. I kept the ale subdomain but that’s the least defensible decision and I might change my mind on it in the future.

So how to save space if I’m not shortening the input data? The original QArt coder uses byte encoding for the main part of the URL. This uses 8 bits per character. I modified the generator to create the URL in two parts – an alphanum encoded section for the main URL and then byte encoding just for the # that joins the URL and its throwaway anchor. Alphanumeric encoding uses 11 bits for every two characters. Overall I did still save a little space, even with the extra stuff needed to define the single-character byte encoded section.

I also played with manually specifying the masking strategy (the mask is a pattern that gets XOR’d over the generated QR code – read the original QArt code article for details).

After a lot of iterating, this is probably the closest I’ll get for now. I think this is technically still a damaged code but the areas that I drew through are part of the instructions about how to read the code, not the data. Like the data itself, there are some redundancies for the instructions so the codes still scan ok. Most of the time I’ve spent on these codes has been spent in the cleanup and tweaking stages – what can I get away with without introducing errors?

This is supposedly an error free code according this debugging website – though the scale of the source image definitely affects its assessment of whether the code is error free or not. The site also doesn’t recognise flipped QR codes (even though other readers seem to be fine with them)

Working on the flipped design is kind of convenient because it’s how the plastic will be engraved for printing.

Being forced to make compromises on the final outcome always keeps me coming back to tweak things again and again – can I change the orientation so that I don’t have to use a flipped code? Can I rebalance the density of noise around the main design so that it doesn’t distract from the centre as much? Can I smooth the curves in the image more? I’ll just keep searching and searching for the ideal version of this design…

To wrap up, here’s the current setup I use for transferring the print to paper. I’ve been experimenting with moving to block printing ink instead of seal paste, because the latter is oil based and takes days to dry. So far I haven’t had a high success rate with the new ink but I think I’m learning. Sometimes a dodgy print can be recovered with a little bit of hand editing, though it requires some deft brushwork!

The seal, the artwork and a folded piece of kitchen paper are clamped to a table.

"QArt Code Signature Blocks" was originally published on Proairesis

#blaugust #seal #signature

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belghast · 9 months

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Blaugust 2023 In Review

Blaugust 2023 In Review - Today is Tabulation Day signalling the end of Blaugust 2023 and in this post I talk about all of the various awards.

Good Morning Friends! It is that time again… Tabulation Day, aka the day in which I spent the morning counting up all the blog posts from all the participants. This year I want to give a huge thanks to a few people who helped out, most specifically GamerLadyP who organized a self-reporting thread on the Discord and MagiWasTaken for getting up well ahead of me due to timezones and providing me a…

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#blaugust #Blaugust 2023 #Blog Post #blogging

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ramenjunkie · 9 months

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Blaugust 2023 Wrap-Up - What I Learned

The last theme week for Blaugust is “Lessons Learned”. I can’t say I learned anything new, I’ve been blogging for a while, literally decades, and I’m already aware of well, all of that which comes along with it. As, kind of depressing as they are. But let’s pretend it’s all fresh and new. Daily Updates As much as I like the idea of updating daily, I am not cut out for it, not anymore. Maybe…

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#Blaugust #Blaugust 2023 #Blaugust2023 #Blogging

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midwestbeemo · 9 months

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Am I an Emotional Wolverine?

One of the many novels of the current era we live in is just how garsh darn efficient we’ve become. The average worker is over twice as productive as they were in the 70s. It would be nice if our wages matched that! That is definitely a discussion for another post. For this post, I’d like to discuss a different idea. It’s the idea that we can take that focus that we use to be more productive in the office and use it to heal.

If you are like me it is too easy for you to push yourself to your mental limit in the name of hard work. This skill is valuable (I don’t want to make anyone feel bad) and not just to our corporate overlords. It is an admirable thing to be a hard worker but you pay a price. Exhaustion and burnout are common features of my life. I’m trying to be better, though. Despite it being Blaugust I’m doing pretty good at the moment. I don’t feel stressed out over this challenge at all and I think that is due to my hyper-focus on getting to know myself better and what makes me tick. I’ve pushed myself to my limit to learn how to be productive at being me.

I’m sure that last sentence doesn’t really mean anything but what I’m trying to say is that I’ve become efficient at taking care of myself. I’ve got to learn a bit more but every day I become a little better at it. I’ve become an emotional wolverine. I’ve got an emotional healing factor x 10. If something takes a big chunk out of me I can regenerate and keep on kicking. This isn’t always true. Sometimes I’m old man logan but that’s still better to living life with no healing factor at all.

I think I will probably make a new post about how to cultivate this. The self-exploration alone will take me hours and I want to get this right. The idea is exciting. It’s kind of like having the healing character in the party constantly healing you or having the star in Mario.

I would warn you. One hallmark of characters that have a healing factor is that they fight sloppily because they don’t take damage the same way. For instance, it’s been said that Moon Knight is an absolutely brutal fighter simply because Khonshu always brings him back when his body gives out. His fighting style is completely unreplicable because it requires you to take ALL the hits.

I would argue that you shouldn’t put yourself in danger just because you’re good at picking yourself up. For instance, my day job has become increasingly taxing on my mental health. It’s what prompted me to start this journey. I’m not going to stay in that job just because I’m doing better now.

I hope that was a fun thought! Till tomorrow!

#blaugust #blogging #productivity #me #the blogger #word dump

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necocolovesstuff · 10 months

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Ready player Girl

I’ve always disliked describing the things I find enjoyable. Specifically writing about it makes me feel uncomfortable because, for me, writing was always all about telling stories that could make people feel something instead of just giving a poor attempt to describe others what kind of person I am. This time is no different. It pains me to admit, however, that due to my current relationship…

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#Blaugust #fun times #personal

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tagnoob · 2 years

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The Labors of Blaugust 2022

Blaugust is over. And it was a successful event for any reasonable measure of things. Blaugust time is coming to town… Belghast has posted his summary of the event, for those who want all the details. I like the round up of the scores myself: 1333 posts were made by Blaugust 2022 Participants. 67 blogs signed up and made at least one post during the month. 24 blogs participated in Blaugust for…

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#Blaugust

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nerdybookahs · 9 months

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Steam Next Fest 2023: Mini Settlers

Steam Next Fest 2023: Mini Settlers #MiniSettlers #Blaugust2023

Steam is currently running its Steam Strategy Fest and as usual, there are a lot of demos to try out. Reus 2 is having its first public demo, by the way! Go check it out if you’re even vaguely interested! But back to the actual topic: Mini Settlers. I started this demo not expecting much at all. Not because of the simplistic graphics, but because it reminded me of Masterplan Tycoon. A game whose…

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#Blaugust #Blaugust 2023 #game demos #Mini Settlers #Steam Strategy Fest 2023

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aywren · 9 months

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#Blaugust #blogging #blog #writing

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draghons · 2 years

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Blaugust 2022 : A Reflection

Well, it’s August 31st and the final day of Blaugust 2022. So it’s absolutely the last day for me to post about this final week’s theme, which is reflecting on lessons learned from this Blaugust, which was my very first. I never saw myself as Blaugust material, but I’m really glad I participated in the event, with a little convincing on the part of my wonderful friend Meghan over at Meghan…

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#blaugust #blaugust 2022

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cinder-says · 2 years

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Blaugust 2022 - 18 - 2 truths and a lie

Thought we'd play a quick fun game in the comments...

We played this game at work a few years back and it was really fun, though some people knew each other too well so it was easy. But I thought this could be a fun game to play with the comments! Basically, each person makes 4 statements – 3 of them should be true, and one should be a lie, and everyone just needs to guess what the lie is. I’ll post mine here – you post yours in the comments and…

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#Blaugust #Blaugust2022

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alecatmew · 10 months

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Slow progress, motivation, daily habits

Slow progress

This will be my second Blaugust 2023 entry, pretend I posted it before midnight.

Some days I can craft from nothing to some pretty complex shapes, and then there’s days like today, where I spent four hours to make what is a laughably simple shape. But it’s setting up things for further progress, and if I’d balked in advance at the time I would be spending to get this step done, then I’d never finish the project at all.

With any luck, I’ll have a new lamp design finalised this week, and this is the prototype of its socket.

Motivation

Oh no we’re jumping the shark really early this year if we’re talking about motivation on day 2.

There’s a lot going on this month, and I often find that having multiple interesting things on the go at once means I can bounce between them. I’m also aware that most of these challenges are self imposed so I’m not going to be stressing about missing any days. Still, it’s a fine balance between kindly letting myself off the hook once, and slipping out of the habits entirely.

Daily Habits

So, here’s something I’ve made no secret of – I cheat on some daily habits. I know that the sin of moving around the clock is worth it because losing a streak is demotivating, and the only person I’m cheating is myself (ok, maybe there’s people on the Duolingo leaderboards that would feel cheated but that’s really small change). And really, the accounting works out more favourably ultimately; by fudging the calendar a bit, I invest in the motivation for myself to get back on track the next day. This worked really effectively for my Ring Fit streak until two missed days in a row put a nail in its coffin. It’s extra hard to get back in the saddle after that… but I’m mostly sanguine about it now and about acknowledging that fitness isn’t a priority right now.

Anyhow, I’m backdating this blog post. And I’m going to be turning back the clock to do today’s Wordle. And hopefully I’ll return to both tomorrow with fresh enthusiasm.

"Slow progress, motivation, daily habits" was originally published on Proairesis

#blaugust

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