Tag: computer

#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

#10 Crazy & Different

Chaz DeSimone 10 Comments

AmperArt #10 Crazy & Different

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.

Upon read­ing of Steve Jobs’ pass­ing, I felt almost the same way as I did on Decem­ber 15, 1966…

As I was fold­ing papers for my paper route, the head­line caught my eye:

WALT DISNEY DIES

I went numb and cried. Both Dis­ney and Jobs were vision­ar­ies, cre­ative genius­es, demand­ing per­fec­tion­ists, and they both died much too young.

My first lap­top was the very first Tita­ni­um G3 – it couldn’t even burn a cd, it was such an ear­ly mod­el. (I’ve since learned to wait for ver­sion 2 or 3.) I was so proud of that thing. It was the ulti­mate in styl­ish design. I didn’t even care if there was a com­put­er inside the case, it was just beau­ti­ful to look at. That’s what I appre­ci­ate most about Steve – he made every­thing with class, from the way it works to the way it looks and feels, even down to the mar­ket­ing and advertising.

Macskateer

M‑I-​C… See how insane­ly great this world is today.

K‑E-Y…Why? Because of vision­ary genius.

After Walt passed away the com­pa­ny stum­bled for awhile, but the “cast mem­bers” and fans of Dis­ney have so much soul that they got it back on its feet. We’ll always won­der what else Walt would have cre­at­ed had he lived longer, and sure­ly we won­der that about Steve. But just like Dis­ney, Apple has such a strong desire to be a class act and pro­duce class prod­ucts, sup­port­ed by its incred­i­bly loy­al fans, that Steve would prob­a­bly be proud of what his peo­ple con­tin­ue to invent and polish.

I designed this poster hon­or­ing Steve Jobs, as a spe­cial edi­tion in my Amper­Art poster series.

The words are straight from of one of Steve’s speeches.

No doubt Walt and Steve are think­ing up the next insane­ly great idea in vision­ary heaven.

Production notes:
Original size: 20 x 30 inches
Program: Photoshop (coulda used Illustrator — probably started out as an entirely different concept for which Photoshop would be required)
Font: Myriad (Apple’s marketing font family)
Ampersand: Myriad, sans one delicious byte