Chunks 101: Introduction to Chunkology

Published Tuesday, December 12, 2006 @ 9:14 am • 0 Responses

We are continually on the prowl for fresh chunks — whether it’s business or pleasure, day or night, scanning the immediate environment for tasty visual gems is a constant delight. Perhaps you find yourself lulling over tacky magazines at the dentist’s office, when suddenly — out of the corner of your eye — you notice it: a small triangular decal attached to the side of the waiting-room television warning people about something with an absolutely ridiculous icon to reinforce its message. Unlike the typical media fodder enslaving the likes of "People" and "Time", the TV warning chunk shows true character — slightly worn and abstract with a sense of authenticity and timelessness. Casually, you rise from your waiting seat and meander over to the TV, as if you may be thinking about changing the channel or something. As your eyes intently examine the coveted nugget, you realize that it is definitely a "must-have" to add to your collection. A quick scan around the room to verify that nobody (surprise) is paying attention, and it’s time to strike! With a single, fluid motion, you silently reach around the side of the TV and peel off the delicious morsel…

Perishable chunks
Perishable’s Chunk Collection
Collecting interesting and inspiring chunks accomplishes several important goals. First and foremost, chunk collecting provides the collector with a continually growing array of graphical imagery for use in art and design projects. Secondly, the perpetual seeking of new material keeps collectors on their toes — alert, focused, and constantly aware of their surroundings. Thirdly, collecting rare images and other abstractia is just plain fun. Chunk collecting is more like a way of thinking or seeing, actually, as the visual realm becomes a virtual offering of possibilities, adding anticipation and even excitement to the game. With practice, the collector’s hunting skills improve, enabling discoveries otherwise hidden. And with time, the collector’s arsenal of visual rarities tends toward infinity, as new chunks are acquired, mixed, and shared.

As professional chunk collector 88teeth eloquently explains:

…Chunks collected correlate to the interests of the chunker — as Perishable is drawn to complex patterns, Kalacakra to gothic, and myself to ironic/humorous chunks. Aside from a general theme that the interest gravitates toward, we all collect outside of this broad categorization as well. […] Other than inspiration, there is a social aspect to the process — sharing the chunk with other interested parties, and generating stimulating, creative thought. Chunks tend to be very varied in appearance and rich in texture or bold in design or idea, which probably stimulates personal creative processes also…

Chunkology, then, is the study of the art of collecting chunks. As with any science, chunkology strives to examine every aspect of chunk collecting to improve understanding and involvement. We invite you to explore the premier exposé of chunkology, concisely written by fellow Perishable Press author August Klotz. Originally printed as an article in the underground art publication, Dead Letter Art [Spring 2004], Chunkology is currently featured at art{space} magazine online. In his article, Professor Klotz sheds light on the overall implications and purpose of chunk collecting, and provides several important insights as to the true nature of this incredibly esoteric pursuit.

This is article #253, posted by Jeff Starr on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 @ 9:14am. Categorized as Chunks & tagged with art, Chunks, Graphics, images. Updated on May 20, 2008. Visited 20510 times.

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Tons of Firewalls

Tuesday, 7 October 2008, 1:45 am

Recently overheard on conservative talk radio (instructing listeners how to obtain a free promotional video from their new website):

“This website has tons and tons of firewalls, so you have to use your real email address to download the video..”

The Quiet Search Revolution

Monday, 6 October 2008, 12:15 pm

Just a thought.. As awesome as Google is these days, it would suck if they ended up owning the entire search-engine business. When they get to the point where all competition is impossible (due to their sheer size, financial resources, media influence, etc.), how many alternate search engines will have the resources for continuous improvement and top-quality search results? When this happens, we will have no choice but to do exactly what Google tells us to do.

As deeply ingrained as it is for everyone to instinctively and unthinkingly turn to Google for their search activity, it is time to leave a few alternate search tabs open for as much use as possible. Instead of using Google just because that’s what you always do, try your search on MSN, Yahoo, Ask, or any of the other independent search engines instead. Sharing traffic with other search engines is a nice, quiet way to keep the competitive spirit alive and well in the search-engine business.

Disappearing WordPress Posts

Wednesday, 1 October 2008, 7:50 pm

Today I experienced difficulties while trying to publish or even save new posts in WordPress. I would compose the post as usual, add all of the keywords, tags, meta tags, and so on, but as soon as I clicked the “Publish” or “Save” button, the post would just disappear from existence.

The weird thing is that during the drafting process, WordPress’ default auto-save feature showed that the post had been saved at expected intervals. Unfortunately, after trying to publish several different posts, WordPress showed absolutely no record of the posts ever being created. They simply vanished into thin air.

Fortunately, a little investigation revealed the culprit. If you should find yourself dealing with this same issue, here are some different things that you should try. First, re-upload fresh copies of your entire WordPress installation. I don’t know why exactly, but apparently various files can either go stale or completely disappear from the server. Overwriting or writing fresh files may do the trick.

If that doesn’t work, check your WordPress database for errors. In my case, a little investigation revealed that something had caused a couple of fatal errors in the wp_posts table. Fortunately, checking and repairing the table solved the issue.

Tumblr Battles

Wednesday, 1 October 2008, 5:30 pm

Please excuse the duplicate Tumbr posts.. seems there is no way to ping Tumblr to refresh/rebuild the RSS feed according to changes in post content. So, to resolve the issue I have discussed now like two or three times regarding paragraph elements and proper feed formatting, I have no choice but to repost a majority of my text posts.

This is necessary for the proper import and display of my Tumblr feed into WordPress. Currently, there are five items displayed at once, each styled according to proper inclusion of paragraph tags. Thus, whenever the Tumblr feed “forgets” to enclose single-paragraph posts with the proper tags, the result is an unstyled post entry displayed on my site.

Assuming that makes sense, you will please excuse my dust while I repost a few older entries in an attempt to reconstruct (the hard way) a properly formatted Tumblr feed.

More Optimization Measures

Wednesday, 1 October 2008, 5:27 pm

Another important step in improving the performance of my recent redesign involves the optimization of both CSS and JavaScript content. During development there were around 15 server requests for these two types of files, 10 JavaScript files and 5 CSS files. This was okay for my own use, but would not work for production purposes.

Optimizing these file types involves consolidation, compression, and caching. Consolidation of 10 JavaScript files into three is huge improvement. Now I deliver one JS file for the functionality of the site, one for Mint, and another for Analytics. Likewise for the stylesheets; after consolidation, a single stylesheet is delivered to all modern browsers. There are two additional stylesheets as well, but they are targeted at IE6 and mobile browsers and will not load elsewhere.

Once the files were consolidated as much as possible, it was time to optimize or “crunch” them. Using the sexy Flumpcakes CSS optimizer, I was able to reduce my stylesheets by around 25%. Likewise for JavaScript, I used xtreeme.com’s optimizer to shave an additional 20% off the size of my JS content.

Finally, once I had consolidated and compressed my JS and CSS files as much as possible, I wanted to further my optimization efforts by ensuring that these files were cached by the browser. By setting far-future Expires headers for everything but the statistical files, my site gains an additional performance boost by eliminating the need to reload preexisting content.

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