Got these back from Ponoko, the prototyping people yesterday. I’m trying a variant where one rivet fits behind another so the tips touch. Not sure if it works… the tolerances need to be really really tight, so plastic isn’t a very good material – or at least I haven’t found a way of doing it. The thing about steel and rivets is that they expand to fill the hole, so the tolerance is tiny fractions of a milimetre. They’re supposed to look a bit like this: Which is quite cool I suppose – remind me of a nautilus for some reason – odd, because they don’t look anything like a nautilus. Still, there you go. Actually, I think I know where it comes from – there’s this view-finder thing that I think belonged to my dad… or… sometime. 1950s Sci-Fi, and one of the discs is 2000 Leagues Under The…

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Well there you go: An iPhone app for measuring the golden mean in px. Does other ratios as well – eg: 16:9 – which is the standard size for video etc. Must admit I’m a bit of a fan of Anamorphic (2.35:1) though – which is what epic movies use… eg, this is Standard 16/9: and this is Anamorphic 2.35/1 So the golden mean ain’t the only ratio on town. It gets around though – eg, Apples new iCloud page… I haven’t done any actual measuring, but the whole thing “rings” with golden mean to me. The developer of the iPhone app links to an interesting article (if you’re a web-dev, and a maths-geek :)) on using the golden mean and modular-scales in web-design and typography. An example of this is on the iPhone app site… eg: I use the golden mean in design… a bit. Not to the degree…

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So passeth the busiest month ever, which was characterised (oddly enough) by a lot of waiting around. I ran out of parts… almost instantly – and in the 10 days that it took for the new ones to turn up, more than twice as many people placed orders than had ever done in a single month ever. So the last 3 days of August were flat-out. It was almost like having my old factory job back again :)… and (if I can keep this up), I’ll actually be able to make a living out of this, which would be great. Besides, it’s winter in NZ right now, which means the weather looks a bit like this: So it’s a good time to be busy doing something industrious. Thanks to everyone who ordered – for your custom and patience. I wouldn’t be able to do this without you. —    …

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Ok – when I say “Klaus Kinski”, I actually mean Werner Herzog… and I must confess, I’m a bit of a fan. I’m a particular fan of Cobra Verde… which is every inch a Werner Herzog film… he thinks like a photographer rather than a film-maker. He tends to have these beautiful set-pieces… and the action is either a small part of what happens with these, or the action consists of “bits” that allow the stringing together of big set-pieces. I’m relying on Youtube for Cobra Verde screen-grabs, so my fav scenes aren’t here… but some fairly good examples are. Now I don’t imagine for a second that Werner is actually measuring this stuff – he’s just winging it… and there’s always the rule of 3rds thing, so there are these centers of gravity that aren’t a millions miles away from where you’d expect golden-mean-lines to be… Ok – that…

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I made this video earlier Which shows that the Golden Mean is used even more extensively in Darth Vader’s helmet design than Mona herself, who is famous for it. The point (that I never get to in the video) behind all this, is not that Darth Vader is related to Mona Lisa… but that there is a margin of error in artistic applications of the golden mean. It’s not big… I’d say (at a guess) it’s around 3%. In a later post, I’ll collect a medium-ish sample-size of examples and figure out exactly what it is. A couple of things alerted me to this… one is the nautilus shell which is always being used as an example… Now that ain’t the golden mean. The exact ratio is closer to 290.5/219.4 = 1.324 (18% wrong)… which is miles out. Now… the measurements on Darth or Mona’s faces are nowhere near as…

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