Forensic Rulers

I’ve been watching too much CSI/NCIS/LAW & ORDER/Num3ers. I often see equipment used that I find interesting but in a recent episode of CSI, I noticed a character photographing evidence with a particular type of ruler. It was reminiscent of a measurement device I have seen used in archeological programmes for detailing the size of an artifact. After searching around the ‘net, I found a few examples and proceeded to draw my own in Illustrator.

This is what I came up with. A single long ruler marked in both Centimeters and Inches, two smaller 2in rules and a pair of right-angle rulers marked up in Centimeters.

The image is linked to a full PDF version for download and printing. Print on highest quality at exactly 100%. I have produced copies on a Canon Pixma 6700D and the marks are very accurate. It is distributed under the Creative Commons license for Attribution, non-c0mmercial and share alike meaning you can copy and distribute it but not use it for commercial purposes.

I’m not sure if and when I will use these but I hope someone will find a use for them. I have also seen a set of rulers with circular apertures and was wondering weather to design a variation on those too.

QRCodes

If you have been following me on Twitter or Facebook, you will be aware that I am gradually producing T-Shirt designs for sale via Zazzle I also make custom T-Shirts like the following:

 

Follow Me QRCode T-Shirt

I’ve been experimenting with QRCodes. A phenomena that has all but taken over Japan and is making some ingress in Europe and the US. It’s basically a two-dimensional bar code that can hold a lot more data than the old EAN types.

EAN 13 1 dimensional type Barcode

The first site I came to when digging around was Kaywa It allows you to generate QR Codes for URLs, Text, Phone Numbers and SMS Text messages. Heres one I created for the Destinys Agent Facebook page:

QRCode for Destinys Agent Facebook Page

You will notice that the above example has a block with a logo and typed information included. This is possible beacuse the QRCode system as error correction built in and can reconstruct missing or corrupted data. I edited it with Photoshop and tested it with Jaxo-Systems Bar Capture, available online and as a freeware download. Jaxo-Systems also provide a bar code generator in the shape of Bar Show also freeware (Simple registration required).

I’m sure that these QRCodes and others like it will become a lot more common very quickly. To get an idea I did a search on Flickr to see just how common they are becoming. Meanwhile, I’ll keep experimenting with uses as ideas come to me.

Koalawhere and Calligraphy

The Koalawhere Website

 I’ve not won much in my life *strains of distant violins* but today, I won a Koala! Not a real one you understand but a toy from Koalawhere.com See the image above confirming my luck 🙂 I still haven’t received the notification e-mail but I live in hope.

Today, I came across a really interesting plugin for Adobe Illustrator – Live Pen from Zero-One Inc. Sadly, only available up to Illustrator CS3 at the moment. But as an interested party in all things Letter and Typeface, I will look forward to a CS4 version to play with.

Livepen from Zero-One Inc.

Links & Twitter

The saga of Twitter‘s repeating messages continued for another day. I must have recieved close to 50 texts in total welcoming me and repeating stuff I’d sent too Twitter myself. Thankfully it all stopped. I haven’t tried to set it up again as yet, I’m content to access via the Twitter site or using Tweetdeck which is a useful application for reading Tweets in a columnar way and to post to both Twitter, Facebook amongst other things. It’s an Adobe Air application so it will run on Windows, Mac or Linux.

Still working on the Destinys Agent website. I’ve added a few things but all offline. I was roped in to help a friend re-design another website so I’ve been a little distracted. Details of both will appear here.

On a journey to the library today, I learned via a free bookmark of The Oxford English Dictionary online. Although it’s a subscription paid site, some library services have pre-paid and you can access it with your library card number.

Oxford Online Services

Could be quite useful but I have to admit, if I have a quick spelling to do I stick it in Google and see if it suggests the correct spelling!

Twitter

What wonderful weather NOT! Oh well, I got to have a really nice Fish ‘n’ Chips at my local Café. I sent an update to Twitter with a #fb to repeat it to my Facebook status and it got stuck. Everytime I refreshed Twitter on my browser upon returning home, it posted ‘Enjoying a lovely Fish ‘n’ Chips in my local Cafe’ to my Facebook status despite my best efforts to change it. I have now deleted the Facebook app Selective Twitter Status to prevent the updates and I’m closely monitoring Twitter to prevent any more repeats.

….. time passes …..

Sadly it turns out that it’s a problem with the phone update causing the issue. I’ve noticed that my last phone update to Twitter has been repeated! I’ve now tried to stop the service entirely.

On the design front, I put together a T-Shirt design based on a Space Invader. It’s available on Zazzle as of now. I have a few others in the pipeline so stay tuned for updates.

New Blog

It’s been a while since I wrote a blog entry. The last one was on blogger but I’ve moved over here to experiment with a different system. Since the previous entry, the Destinys Agent Facebook page has accumulated 83 fans and I’ve set up a Twitter account to keep the world informed in whats going on too. Links for these will be available on the sidebar.

Destinys Agent Website Portfolio Page

The official website continues in development. Not far to go now. Just a few last minute restructures and additions. It’s been a long time coming! I’m looking forward to redirecting the address http://www.destinysagent.com from the Flickr pages to the official website.

Orders are still coming in slowly, although I had to turn a job away the other day since the client wanted to book me on a day I have 2 other jobs already. It was a recommendation from another client. That is really frustrating when I haven’t enough work to fill the week. At least I turned them down for a good reason.

I continue to submit material to various stock libraries and also Zazzle I’m pleased to report the first Zazzle sale as of Monday this week.

Feel free to comment, message or tweet.

1st – The Website

So hows the website coming? Well, as you can see, it’s getting there. I still have the gallery categories and structure to define. The default gallery pictures to edit. The descriptions and metatags for each page to write. I really hope the site is active by the end of this weekend. It’s a king-pin, a key stone that needs to be in place to enable me to promote myself effectively. OK, there are other methods but this is what it all hangs on.

As for the rest of the business, it’s slow. I’ve another booking at least making three in total and I just completed a job for http://www.salsajester.com but I need more. Hopefully, the website will procure this.