For every comic that pleasantly comes together in an unexpected way, there’s another that unpleasantly doesn’t.
The title, ‘interpolation,’ refers to a problem I’ve been having with the Window’s version of GIMP since a recent update. Resizing the image – even shrinking an image's size at 300dpi – results in softening the image. This is a new problem introduced with the update. Additionally, GIMP is randomly dropping the resolution from 300dpi to 75dpi, and I’ve yet to figure out where this intervention is configured. These are annoying problems, and I’ve been avoiding using the PC for this reason. However, the week I drew this I had just purchased a larger monitor for my PC and was luxuriating in being able to really see the image. Also, I had left my Macbook at work.
So there’s something about the process of resizing that screws with the image in Windows that doesn’t do the same on MAC. It’s really annoying because I want to take every opportunity to bad-mouth MAC over PC, but here’s a case where it clearly is working on MAC when PC isn’t. Of course, searching forums for an explanation of what’s going on is itself an exhausting project (as it always is).
And this is my life: every little computer-related technical issue becomes a thing I’m responsible for resolving, and the people who I support never have any idea (or are interested in learning) how complicated the problem they are asking me to solve might actually be…but I digress into my usual rant.
The Squidman line is from Ladytron’s ‘Evil’ (2003), one of my favorite songs by them, and a sentiment that certainly rings true for me today. The manually-displaced (shredded) portrait (I believe that’s cartoonist Chris Ware) to whom SM is speaking did not translate, and the softness Windows GIMP interpolation gave him just made it worse.
I’m guessing the Soap Strip line is from an advertisement. Oh, right, I remember now. I bought a carpet shampooer – the first time I’ve shampooed carpets in my entire life – and I was trying to figure out how to clean a really, really filthy carpet, that had not been cleaned in at least a couple of decades. That was from an article on HOW DANGEROUS dirty carpets really are. I don’t know…I have a hard time getting upset over that kind of thing. Still, it’s been frustrating at how impossible cleaning this disgusting carpet has been.
The Pharm Life were supposed to play on Robert Shaw’s line from the Spielberg’s Jaws (1975), “We’re going to need a bigger boat.” But, of course, I blew the line, and so the frame stands as a testament to what doesn’t go right when I fail to proof, when I rush the final product.
Guy asks Eno “Who are the algorists?” This question came up on a Google search for, I’m guessing, George Brecht, inspiration for the third frame in Episode 94, “Algorithmic.” I’ve been listening to a lot of Eno’s ambient work, lately, and also, obviously, thinking on the Oblique Strategies cards, and considering how things are made using generative patterns. Somehow, this question – as presented in a search result – felt appropriate for the resolution here.
The title, again, referring to the computer’s attempt at guessing what the human thinks the thing should be (the interpolation process that happens during the resizing of the image). And how the human anthropomorphizes the computer as ‘doing’ that. And how that, in turn, is a model for how the human assumes their own process to be non-mechanical, in essence, anthropomorphizing him-or-herself, though the human process is itself largely mechanical and deterministic. And how this, itself, is all an example of how I don’t understand how humans process their world. And how alienated I feel from them, day to day. Gotta replace this carpet.
For every comic that pleasantly comes together in an unexpected way, there’s another that unpleasantly doesn’t.
ReplyDeleteThe title, ‘interpolation,’ refers to a problem I’ve been having with the Window’s version of GIMP since a recent update. Resizing the image – even shrinking an image's size at 300dpi – results in softening the image. This is a new problem introduced with the update. Additionally, GIMP is randomly dropping the resolution from 300dpi to 75dpi, and I’ve yet to figure out where this intervention is configured. These are annoying problems, and I’ve been avoiding using the PC for this reason. However, the week I drew this I had just purchased a larger monitor for my PC and was luxuriating in being able to really see the image. Also, I had left my Macbook at work.
So there’s something about the process of resizing that screws with the image in Windows that doesn’t do the same on MAC. It’s really annoying because I want to take every opportunity to bad-mouth MAC over PC, but here’s a case where it clearly is working on MAC when PC isn’t. Of course, searching forums for an explanation of what’s going on is itself an exhausting project (as it always is).
And this is my life: every little computer-related technical issue becomes a thing I’m responsible for resolving, and the people who I support never have any idea (or are interested in learning) how complicated the problem they are asking me to solve might actually be…but I digress into my usual rant.
The Squidman line is from Ladytron’s ‘Evil’ (2003), one of my favorite songs by them, and a sentiment that certainly rings true for me today. The manually-displaced (shredded) portrait (I believe that’s cartoonist Chris Ware) to whom SM is speaking did not translate, and the softness Windows GIMP interpolation gave him just made it worse.
I’m guessing the Soap Strip line is from an advertisement. Oh, right, I remember now. I bought a carpet shampooer – the first time I’ve shampooed carpets in my entire life – and I was trying to figure out how to clean a really, really filthy carpet, that had not been cleaned in at least a couple of decades. That was from an article on HOW DANGEROUS dirty carpets really are. I don’t know…I have a hard time getting upset over that kind of thing. Still, it’s been frustrating at how impossible cleaning this disgusting carpet has been.
The Pharm Life were supposed to play on Robert Shaw’s line from the Spielberg’s Jaws (1975), “We’re going to need a bigger boat.” But, of course, I blew the line, and so the frame stands as a testament to what doesn’t go right when I fail to proof, when I rush the final product.
Guy asks Eno “Who are the algorists?” This question came up on a Google search for, I’m guessing, George Brecht, inspiration for the third frame in Episode 94, “Algorithmic.” I’ve been listening to a lot of Eno’s ambient work, lately, and also, obviously, thinking on the Oblique Strategies cards, and considering how things are made using generative patterns. Somehow, this question – as presented in a search result – felt appropriate for the resolution here.
The title, again, referring to the computer’s attempt at guessing what the human thinks the thing should be (the interpolation process that happens during the resizing of the image). And how the human anthropomorphizes the computer as ‘doing’ that. And how that, in turn, is a model for how the human assumes their own process to be non-mechanical, in essence, anthropomorphizing him-or-herself, though the human process is itself largely mechanical and deterministic. And how this, itself, is all an example of how I don’t understand how humans process their world. And how alienated I feel from them, day to day. Gotta replace this carpet.