Unpaid ads:

Stackoverflow is the most addictive developer’s resource. Go check it out now! I use it myself, and I got to tell ya, they don’t call it “crack overflow” for nothing.

Joel helped me find my current job. Check out the Joel on Software job board if you are not happy with yours.

WestNIC provides reliable reseller hosting services across the globe.

Evernote is the best code, memo, photo, todo, wishlist application I’ve ever used. Mad props for making Memex real.

What's All this Then?

My name is Michael Krakovskiy, and this is my blog.

Here’s what you might find interesting:
100 Views of the Empire State Building project: I try to take 100 interesting photos of Manhattan’s (sadly) tallest building.

My Gastronomic Adventures: I eat weird food - from 13 year old New Coke to Durian and parasitic fungi.

My attempts to grow exotic plants: pineapples, coconuts, etc.

My photos, mostly of New York City.

My musings about architecture mostly illustrated with my own photos. Would you like to learn about a mental patient who died at 103 who served as a model for some very famous sculptures? How about Brooklyn’s ugliest building? How about a wooden skyscraper?

I find myself frequently writing about logos. The most popular article I ever wrote is about the redesigns of the Starbucks logo.

I wrote a series of “Best Sci-Fi You Haven’t Read” posts:

Psywarrior
Yes, Virginia There Is Synergy
Call Time Police - We’ve Got a Time Traveler

Other topics that interest me include NYPD, New York City subway system, Japan, and things made out of titanium. On top of all of that, I seem to be interested in pigeions and Rupert Murdoch.

Dear reader, please browse around. You are sure to find something interesting. I could really use some help in bringing in readership: subscribe to the rss feed, digg the stories (there’s a convenient button at the bottom of every article), link to my blog from yours, write some comments. I put in a lot of effort into writing, and I really appreciate your attention.

If you don’t want all this pseudo-intellectual and want some lolcats? Please don’t go away. Here, I have that stuff too. Here, here’s another. And another. And another. I lied about not posting cat pictures.



Mu

Tue, 11/06/2007 - 03:41 — deadprogrammer

I’ve been shopping for Japanese calligraphy scrolls lately. I wanted to purchase a scroll with a kanji “yume”, but instead ended up with “mu” instead. I purchased it without knowing what the character meant, just on the aesthetics of the brush strokes.

The concept of “mu” is touched upon in both Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Gödel, Escher, Bach. I’ve read both books (even if skipping large chunks) and understood maybe 5% of what the authors had to say. I really need to reread them a few times.

In the past I really hated graffiti and abstract art because they seemed meaningless to me. Now I like both, because Japanese calligraphy taught me that art can be both abstract and super specific at the same time.

My new calligraphy scroll is both a character that conveys a very specific word which has carries a meaning that Buddhist monks and computer programmers find very special, but is also a multitude of Rorschach test shapes. I see a woman’s head with flowing hair, a jumping fish, a Daruma doll’s head.

I wish I could read the three characters on the left as well as the information on the seals, find out who made this and when.  My guess is that it’s Showa era, after the war, and that the calligrapher is very skillful.

<- Previous Post: Subway Archeology

-> Next Post: Thnking Inside the Box

No votes yet

Comments

Sun, 12/09/2007 - 22:03 — agc (not verified)

Now that comments are working I can ask: Are you going to stamp it with the mark of the deadprogrammer?


Mon, 12/10/2007 - 11:36 — deadprogrammer

Well, that would be like taking credit for something I did not create. And in any case, I don't even have a hanco, although I do want to have one made.


Tue, 12/11/2007 - 23:18 — LesTP (not verified)

The other stamps are the marks of previous owners of the scroll. It's like an exlibris, not like an author's signature on a painting in Western art.


Wed, 12/12/2007 - 16:41 — deadprogrammer

Huh, interesting. I always thought the other stamps were for the school, date, etc. On the other hand I can't find a single mention of the practice of stamping calligraphy scrolls by the owner...


Mon, 05/19/2008 - 07:29 — Durf (not verified)

Any chance of seeing a larger/sharper scan of this? I might be able to figure out the stamps. (I think the top one of the two on the left matches the three characters in the name there. 闖 looks like it might be the first but I can't tell for sure. In any case I know people who are better at this than I am.)


Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a><b><i><img>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

 Subscribe in a reader

More Unpaid Ads:

Jesse Reklaw’s Slow Wave comics absolutely rock!. Jesse designed Deadprogrammer.com corner graphic, the one with the programmer and the cat. And now you can buy his new book - The Night of Your life: