Category: Websites

#126 Safe & Secure

Chaz DeSimone Leave a comment

Download full-size poster

#126 Safe & Secure
Click image to view full size or download poster for gallery-​quality printing & framing.
This is a high-​resolution pdf & may take a few minutes to download.
Find printing tips & framing ideas here.

Making websites safe & secure

On May 25, 2018 the Gen­er­al Data Pro­tec­tion Reg­u­la­tion was imple­ment­ed for all web­sites in the EU to clear­ly dis­close any data col­lec­tion, declare the law­ful basis & pur­pose for data pro­cess­ing, how long data is being retained, & if it is being shared with any third-​parties or out­side of the EU. Does­n’t this per­tain only to Euro­pean coun­tries? No way! Just about every web­site can be viewed in any coun­try, so it applies to all web­sites worldwide.

Basi­cal­ly, it means if you col­lect per­son­al infor­ma­tion — any­thing from an email address to a birth­day to cred­it card num­bers — you must state exact­ly what the infor­ma­tion will be used for, & ask per­mis­sion to receive it.

There are heavy fines for non-​compliance. Here is a com­pre­hen­sive arti­cle about GDPR on Wikipedia.

It’s a good idea to also update a web­site’s pri­va­cy pol­i­cy & terms & con­di­tions state­ments to reflect the new standards.

Safe & Secure…until past due

Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, as I was cre­at­ing Amper­Art #126 Safe & Secure, a friend asked if I could cov­er her rent this month for a stor­age unit before it went to auc­tion, so I did. (I lost every­thing at a stor­age auc­tion on Feb­ru­ary 8, 2014, & it has dev­as­tat­ed me ever since & will con­tin­ue to dev­as­tate me for the rest of my life. So I know how it is.) Stor­age — anoth­er mean­ing for Safe & Secure.

Production notes for #126 Safe & Secure:
Original size: 20x30 inches
Program: Adobe Illustrator
Font: Machine
Ampersand: Memphis
Credits:
Lock: deposit​pho​tos​.com (keyhole modified)
Background: psd​graph​ics​.com (free high-​quality images, a wonderful site)
You may repost the image & article. Please credit Amper​Art​.com.
To download a full-​size high-​resolution 11x17-​inch poster, click on the image.

For pro­fes­sion­al graph­ic design, please vis­it Des­i­mone Design.

Desimone? Damn good!

#58 Up & Running

Chaz DeSimone 4 Comments

58-up-&-running500x750i

#58 Up & Running
Click to view full-​size or download hi-​rez image for gallery-​quality printing and framing. 
This is a high-​resolution pdf & may take a few minutes to download.
Find printing tips & framing ideas here.

Phish­ing mal­ware attacked Amper​Art​.com in Sep­tem­ber 2019, shut­ting the site down for sev­er­al weeks. It took quite an effort to remove all the infec­tions and restore the site to nor­mal, after which it was migrat­ed to a new host­ing com­pa­ny and for­ti­fied with all sorts or anti-​malware and virus fire­walls. Now that Amper­Art is once again Up & Run­ning, here’s a sto­ry about a spe­cial place where I used to vis­it my com­put­er genius friend after high school.

In the 1970’s one of my best friends worked as a com­put­er pro­gram­mer for the Glen­dale Uni­fied School Dis­trict. I’d fre­quent­ly drop in on him and enjoy the phe­nom­e­non of feel­ing like I was in the con­trol room of a sci-​fi flick.

The dis­tric­t’s Com­put­er Con­trol Cen­ter was a large room with an ele­vat­ed floor that was air-​conditioned under­neath to keep the mas­sive elec­tron­ics cool. I guess you could say the com­put­ers on that ele­vat­ed floor were lit­er­al­ly Up & Run­ning. There were banks of huge reel-​to-​reel machines that hummed and clicked in syn­chronic­i­ty. Besides those state-​of-​the-​art won­ders, data was stored on punch cards that sort­ed through a large machine sound­ing like cards shuf­fling at a casi­no, and on paper strips punched with lit­tle holes resem­bling a tickertape.

Every­thing you see here is on a tiny chip inside your smart phone.

But the eeri­est thing about this room was the strange green glow ema­nat­ing from the com­put­er mon­i­tors. Noth­ing like what you’re view­ing right now. Every screen dis­played rows and rows of same-​size let­ters and num­bers, a sin­gle font if you can call it that, in this cath­ode tube green glow. You even had to know a com­plex com­put­er lan­guage to type any­thing (I am indebt­ed to who­ev­er invent­ed wysiwyg). 

Amper­Art #58 Up & Run­ning is rem­i­nis­cent of those green-​glow mon­i­tors. See the faint num­bers in the poster image where it oth­er­wise appears black? That’s where the char­ac­ters have been burned into the phos­pho­rs of the cath­ode ray tube. No full-​color web­sites in those days! How­ev­er, with a lit­tle artis­tic tal­ent and a lot of patience, you could actu­al­ly draw pic­tures like this:

CAT on CRT

Here’s an inter­est­ing his­to­ry of cre­at­ing art with let­ters & num­bers, going way back to the days of typewriters. 

Dedicated to Joe Freezon, best friend, computer nerd. RIP
Production notes for #158 Up & Running:
Original size: 20x30 inches
Programs: Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop
Font: Green Screen (background code*), main text lettering by Chaz
Ampersand: custom design by Chaz
Credits:
Green Screen font* by James Shields (click to see all his fonts)
*an exact copy of the standard IBM PC text mode font
Note: “&” replaces “and” in most or all text, including quotations, headlines & titles.
You may repost the image & article. Please credit Amper​Art​.com.
To download a full-​size high-​resolution 11x17-​inch poster suitable for printing & framing, click on the image.
Visit DesimoneDesign.com

RIP BLACKWOLF, AMOS & ANDY, BRIQUETTE, JEEPERS CREEPERS, & ALL MY FRIENDS’ & NEIGHBORS’ BLACK CATS WHO WILL BE CELEBRATING NATIONAL BLACK CAT DAY IN HALLOWEEN HEAVEN