Fonts (variable), maps (one-dimensional & Ptolemaic), books, cataloguing. Creator @axis_praxis and Samsa, co-creator @FauxFoundry and @LetterLuvvers.
Bristol
Joined April 2007
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Laurence Penney retweeted
Objects of high aspect ratio benefit from specially designed cameras to avoid perspective distortion. Daniel Lawrence Lu’s photos of San Francisco streetcars, like Adam Magyar’s earlier ones of NYC Subway trains, use line scan cameras, capturing 1000s of pixel columns/second.
A camera that only sees one column of pixels at a time turns out to be the perfect way to photograph a streetcar.
Daniel Lawrence Lu stood by the Muni tracks for three hours with a line scan camera, capturing about 10,000 one-pixel slices a second as each tram rolled past.
Since the vehicle paints itself onto the frame, there's no perspective at all. The trams come out flat and dead-on, like the elevation drawings an engineer would make, while the background smears into stripes. And people don't blur either.
news.ycombinator.com/item?id…
Laurence Penney retweeted
If @elonmusk used just 0.5% of his wealth to play the modern Carnegie, and to reestablish the physical library as a shared community asset for curious minds, especially the young, and as a fortress to defend information, it would be the greatest philanthropic act of the century.
Laurence Penney retweeted
Following the UN vote on #EqualEarth I built a light #D3 app with sliders for central meridian/reference parallel. I like using 45° instead of the equator; balances distortion, brings the Arctic Circle into view, shows northern landmasses clearly. Try it:
codepen.io/editor/staridas-g…
Laurence Penney retweeted
In other words, a disgraceful dereliction of duty for a site of cross-cultural significance, that should be open to all curious visitors, to say nothing of its alleged protection by @UNESCO. Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Laurence Penney retweeted
Great to see an animated version of the dimension-busting Flatland photography by @aydinbuyuktas. It would be fantastic to try this in a navigation app.
Laurence Penney retweeted
Remembering the night I got fixated on paper data storage and learned you can fit about 140 pages of (encoded) plaintext on a single sheet of paper. The page below includes the encoder legend and its source code repeated 26 times
It's illegible at a glance and breaks when photographed or shared on social media, but is totally reconstructable without guidance if printed, scanned, and handed to an LLM for decoding
Do with that what you will!
Laurence Penney retweeted
Remembering the late, great Dolly, who brought joy, comfort and inspiration to so many - including the millions of children given free books through her Imagination Library. We will always ❤️ you.
Laurence Penney retweeted
There are now FOUR Odyssey translations on Amazon’s list of the fifty bestselling titles. Emily Wilson’s translation just sold its millionth copy. People everywhere are reading a 2,700-year-old poem. Those of us who were myth geeks as kids have waited our whole LIVES for this.
Laurence Penney retweeted
1/n
A physical book is a real object, anchored. If you read a particular edition, you remember not only the contents but the object itself: its cover, typography, smell, even where a passage sat on the page.
Books organize themselves in memory by place --the ancient method of loci.
Digital text does not exist.
My new library does not have tall bookshelves, intentionally so all books are in easy reach.
Non #Lindy books are ditched except those that can be useful are in a hallway not in the main rooms.
[Same material as Umberto Eco's but shorter]
Laurence Penney retweeted
The greatest harbinger of end times is not plague or war, but the sudden enormous proliferation of Xerox-quality POD editions (unmarked! no warning!) from houses like Penguin.
Laurence Penney retweeted
Christopher Nolan asked the Oracle of Delphi, "Will audiences love my adaptation of the Odyssey?"
And the Pythia replied, "They will discuss it non-stop for months before it even premieres."
And away he went, glad in this heart, poor fool.
Laurence Penney retweeted
It was an honour to have a 1D map from my collection feature in an @underware talk last year at @ATypI Copenhagen. The video of the talk has just been published.
youtube.com/watch?v=5jaYrjHk…
Laurence Penney retweeted
Destroying the @InternetArchive's @WayBackMachine would be the equivalent of the burning of the Library of Alexandria - one of the worst losses of knowledge in history.
Media giants are now threatening to do this.
We can't let this happen.
Pass it on.
Laurence Penney retweeted
清明上河图 (Along the River During the Qingming Festival, 12th century), the painted scroll sometimes called China’s Mona Lisa, has been brought to life digitally before, but AI is taking it to another level 👏
Laurence Penney retweeted
‘The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it.’
Tom Stoppard 1937 - 2025
Laurence Penney retweeted
Galileo explaining the cosmos to the muses. The frontispiece from the first edition of his collected works, printed in Bologna 1655-6.
ALT frontispiece to Opere di Galileo, showing Galileo pointing out heavenly phenomena to three women (muses), one holding a telescope
Laurence Penney retweeted
According to the @TheGreatB00ks Ascend hosts, Plato wrote plays in the vein of Sophocles and Euripides but burned them all on meeting Socrates
Laurence Penney retweeted
“In England, at all events, every man who wishes to stand well with the world will accent his Greek properly. Concerning that man who misplaces them, damaging inferences will certainly be drawn, and in most instances with justice.”
—-H.W. Chandler, 1862
