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Monday, Mar 05, 2007

Ollie

I somehow ended up at Malkin's site (damn you intertubes!), and noticed her article on the recent gathering of conservatives: CPAC. She noted that CPAC's Defender of the Constitution Award was presented by Col. Ollie North.

CPAC: the only good criminal is a conservative criminal*.


*Three felony convictions overturned on a technicality. Meanwhile Ollie and O.J. are looking for the real shredder.
- mark 3-05-2007 10:10 pm [link] [add a comment]

Joe Klein Describes Bush's Base

A right-wing extremist member of Bush's base exhibits many, but not necessarily all, of the following attributes:

- mark 3-05-2007 4:47 pm [link] [add a comment]

Image Artifacts

This is a comment I posted over at Tom's place during a discussion about some of the math underlying gif/jpeg/bmp/etc based new media art.

Okay, here's an attempt at a simple explanation of anti-aliasing and jpeg quantization. I started with the image below: the letter in in Times New Roman. The letter is anti-aliased, which gives it nice smooth edges.

The detail below shows how the smooth edges are acheived. Rather than an abrupt transition from black to white, there are various shades of grey pixels to create the illusion of smooth curves. This techniqe is very common in digital displays and printing. The image below is detail of the same letter having passed through jpeg at a high compression ratio. Jpeg compression introduces what is known as "quantization noise". In jpeg compression, the pixels are divided into blocks, and the blocks of pixels are decomposed into a set of wave representations, which are then approximated (quantized). When a jpeg is displayed, the quantized waves are converted back into pixels. Because of the decomposition and approximation process, blockiness, wave-like spotches, and splatters are introduced into the image.


- mark 3-05-2007 4:42 pm [link] [add a comment]

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