April 2002
The virtual tarot deck continues with all
the sevens
(Wands,
Cups,
Swords, and
Coins). For some reason
these have been the toughest cards so far—the concepts
they embody proved elusive when it comes to devising a
stick-figure illustration. Luckily for ’their’
weekend I have had an extra day or so in which to draw them
(because it is the Easter break).
I have also tweaked the navigation between the pages for pips
cards—each now has links at the bottom to the same number
in the other three suits.
The latest installment in my stick-figure tarot
deck is two more of the trumps: XIIII. Temperance and XV. The Devil.
Hope you all enjoy
them.
I have now put up the first page on my brand-spanking-new
web-site, whose
URL you should
find familiar:
http://www.alleged.org.uk/.
So far its only content is a new and improved front page, all of
whose links link to this one. Eventually all the old content
will be copied across, but I want to give myself a chance
to tidy things up along the way.
I have now converted the photo albums
(Aviemore, Roch
Castle, and Bologna) on my old site
(http://www.alleged.demon.co.uk/)
to go on
the new site (http://www.alleged.org.uk/). In the process I have ripped out the old
HTMLgen code that generated them and replaced it with the more
streamlined TclHTML equivalent (using the code I concocted
when building the photo albums on the
CAPTION site). As a result,
the last vestiges of the old Alleged look and feel
(with the tabbed-notebook style) is gone! I guess it must
be time for a redesign, then... :-)
This week’s slightly delayed installment of my
virtual tarot deck is the Eights of
Wands,
Cups,
Swords, and
Coins. This
week’s main advance is behind the scenes—the
algorithm used for generating the tables for mapping
Sketch’s colour space to Adobe Illustrator’s so that
it works better.
I have been forced to post
a response
to a page
in SVGWiki, because my attempts to enter a response using
the Wiki page itself have failed with a
VBScript
error.
I also have to say that while I think the Wiki concept
of universal editorship is great, its reliance on its own quirky
syntax is a little annoying.
(On the other hand, HTML is not as amenable to hand-editing as
it might be. This is a result of its being based on the
splendidly verbose SGML syntax.)
Update (8 May 2002). I have updated SVGWiki—after
connecting to it with MSIE rather than Mozilla or Opera.
Perhaps there is some MSIE-specific JavaScript code involved?
Update (14 February 2004).
My note on the object tag has been updated to
reflect the fact that Safari 1.0 (released 2003) cannot handle
objects containing embed.
This week’s installment of the Alleged
Tarot project is two more trumps: XVI. The Tower and XVII. The Star. That
makes for quite a contrast—the Tower represents sudden,
disruptive change, the Star peace and tranquility. At the same
time, both have origins in ancient Babylon: the Star is related
to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, and the Tower is obviously an
allusion to the Tower of Babel, a story from that early part of
the Bible that is rooted in pre-Judeo-Christian mythology.
