http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:KzinistZerg&section=today deviantART RSS for by:KzinistZerg en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:11:02 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://KzinistZerg.deviantart.com/journal/27803910/ http://KzinistZerg.deviantart.com/journal/27803910/ Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:11:55 PDT
I have a bunch of extra beads (wooden, gemstone, glass, lampwork, etc) that I was going to make into jewelry and sell at First Friday, but I also had an idea for these decals you can make from paint. There's a kind of glass paint that when dry, is static-cling capable of sticking to any smooth nonporous surface and is removeable again. I wanted to make designs like the ones already in my gallery (as well as celtic and abstract and miscellaneous) and scrapbook and sell them-- money to be done by mail, ship them in padded envelopes. I imagine pricing them something like 25 to 50 cents per square inch and making sizes from 1x1 inches to 8x8.

I was also thinking of making and selling said beadwork, knotwork, or macrame jewelry, and also of selling painted rocks (rocks with animals like cats, dogs, snakes, dragons painted on them).

Is there anyone who would buy such a thing? And do you think there would be a demand for it at, say, Arts in the Park or First Friday?

I don't do journals often and a response would be quite nice, as this is a question more than an update.



~KZ

]]> ~KzinistZerg http://KzinistZerg.deviantart.com/journal/26841873/ http://KzinistZerg.deviantart.com/journal/26841873/ Wed, 26 Aug 2009 17:29:48 PDT
Common sense seems to say, “of course it moves smoothly!” But then, oh then, we have quantum physics to deal with…

It took a long time for people to work up to atoms and molecules, to find and put down in laws the electromagnetic force, gravity, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. It took longer to find all the little particles we claim make up the universe, and even now we’re not sure quite what goes where. But particles are like animals in zoos: we know they’re animals and if we can’t quite classify them, we can still watch them. When we watch them, we see their caged behavior, not how they act in the wild, and with particles this turns out to be quite important.

Quantum Wave Functions (which can be acronym-ified to QWF, or qwiff for pronunciation) behave like waves in water, like light, or sound waves. Then there are matter waves, but qwiffs govern all of this. Qwiffs are continuous and smooth, like the first arrow.

For anyone versed in quantum theory or statistics, this is an easy idea. This function of four variables (the three spatial dimensions and time) describes the position of a given particle. We can assume an electron for ease of thought. Now a particle is a localized thing; it’s got only one position at a given time. But its qwiff is the probability to find the particle at a given point at a given time. Until this is observed the particle is everywhere and nowhere. Until some observer pops the qwiff, we have Schrödinger’s cat for every particle. If we want to know where the electron is, we have to observe it: pop the qwiff, and change what was a smooth mathematical probability into a discontinuous chunk of knowledge, knowledge that rapidly decays if we take the uncertainty principle into account.

Every damn particle.

Wolf carried this to its logical conclusion: if you need to observe, what observes? If I see a photon, what happened? Call it a star: some star emitted a qwiff which represents all possible points that the photon could be in. Light-years away, this qwiff hits my retina; the qwiff pops. The photon has been detected. But was it the lens? The lens bent the light, was that the pop? The light hit the molecule, but the molecule has no way of knowing it was hit, so it has its own qwiff of hit/wasn’t hit. Then the molecule has to change shape (another qwiff), then this has to depolarize the membrane (yet another), then the signal has to not be damped out by another neuron (and another, another, another), then someone in there, the “I” or “me” has to notice it. Because if I fail to notice the dot of light, was it really there? Did the qwiff pop?

This is both problem and solution. If you take quantum theory as an accurate description of reality, which I am forced to do, then everything exists in a world of qwiffs, or as Wolf calls it, the Big Qwiff. This is popped constantly by this thing or another, to make the reality we know. Physics turns into philosophy here: because the Big Qwiff must be popped, what pops it? Idea One is solipsism: me. I do it. Only I exist and everything else is a choice I made to notice qwiffs at particular points in space/time. I dislike that one, but since there is another solution: every particle, atom, thing, has its own observations. If we take all those observations, each one has that essential Observer, or Mind, which can pop qwiffs. All those little things make up us, our unconscious, and then “I” and “Me” would be a sort of super-consciousness which observes our observations.

And damn me if this doesn’t all follow logically from Wolf’s arguments! I’d recommend reading the book, if only for the ideas, and especially because I haven’t the writing talent to convey his ideas.

And damn me if I don’t have to redesign the entire magic system of Phoenix Enchained to accommodate this. And damn again, I’ve done that already! Twice!

“It is a causal world of exact mathematical accuracy, but there is no matter present. It is a world of paradox and utter confusion for human, limited, intelligence. For it is a world where a thing both occupies a single point at a single time and an infinite number of places at the same time. Yet there i... ]]> ~KzinistZerg http://KzinistZerg.deviantart.com/journal/13392275/ http://KzinistZerg.deviantart.com/journal/13392275/ Mon, 18 Jun 2007 10:08:24 PDT
Here's the list of stocks I've used from DA. Anything I've used as stock is favorited, too.

Things I've used:

ICONS:

ClaireJones' "Apophysis Icons": [link]
Pantoni's "Elements Icon Suite": [link]

PHOTOSHOP CS4 BRUSHES, GRADIENTS, AND ETC.:

DigitalPhenom's "Super Dooper Gradient Pack": [link]
JPeiro's "Hi-res Flowing Line Brushes" [link]

STOCK APO GRADIENTS:

ClaireJones' "Apo Ultra Smooth Gradient Pack": [link]
ClaireJones' "Apophysis Gradient Pack I": [link]
ClaireJones' "Apophysis Gradient Pack II": [link]

STOCK APO SCRIPTS:

Shortgreenpigg's "Grand Julian Batch Script": [link]

STOCK ART:

A stock Ibis picture by "Meiuha-stock," a link for which I have been completely unable to find
dawnallynnstock's "Full Moon": [link]
ForsakeWolf's "Wolf 27": [link]
ForsakeWolf's "Wolf 28": [link]
ForsakeWolf's "Wolf 40": [link]
JadedSphinx-Stock's "Sumatran Tiger 3": [link]
Rainadayze's "Wolf89": [link]
Rainadayze's "Wolf5": [link]
Rainadayze's "Wolf10": [link]
LucieG-Stock's "Fox 1" : [link]
Samuel-FallenAngel's "Vucko": [link]
Santa-Evita's "Oh, la luna, la luna...": [link]
Seductive-Stock's "Tiger - 8": [link]

TUTORIALS:

ClaireJones' Julia Uncovered v 2.2: [link]
ClaireJones' Apophysis Guide v 2.1: [link]

WALLPAPERS:

taenaron's "The Ring": [link]

]]> ~KzinistZerg