(The websafe palette is a set of 216 colors which are meant to look the same on PCs and Macs, thus ensuring cross-platform compatibility in Web design. It's something of a holdover from the days of 8-bit [256-color] monitors, as 24-bit displays are now standard. Also standard is the form of the English sonnet: three quatrains followed by a couplet, rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The following differs slightly, with its scheme of AAAA BBBB CCCC DD. Alert readers will also note the acrostic formed by the first letters of each line.)
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Ode to the Websafe Palette
--------------------------
Websafe palette! Heroes two-sixteen!
Entrance the multitudes with shining green!
By cathode ray, by liquid crystal's sheen
Stream forth thy avatars, on each machine!
At odds may operating systems be,
Full sore their battles rage, diversity
Estrange a billion desktop shrines -- too free,
Perhaps, this enterprise? this Babel tree?
Ah, no! the mighty palette's bridge will span
Laptops, handhelds, browsers obscure; no man
Enisled need be, though antiquarian
Tenacious, so audacious is thy plan!
Then hail! o lingua franca of Web sight!
Electronic Esperanto! Hail thy light!
----------------------------
Copyright 2003 websafestudio
nice, websafe!
as an amateur web designer, I am familiar with the concept. I actually like the limitations that it places upon designers, though it can be a real challenge to find just the right color combination...
welcome to the Board!
Thank you for your kind welcome, etaoin. (I remember etaoin shrdlu, but have forgotten its origin just now.)
I agree, it can be fun and challenging to work within limitations, but the websafe palette is so darn GREEN, and a good deal of uncanny cat-eye green at that. Thus the mock-heroic, tongue-in-cheek tone of my "ode."
May I suggest, if others wish to play, the roolz to be:
1.Sonnet form, with mild variation if desired
2. Vertical acrostic formed by the theme
3. The theme to be an unexpected object of hommage
OK, musick, get to werk
!
consuelo - There are only so many hours in a day...
... oh, you mean write some
new ones!
Do you wanna provide websafe a link about "roolz", or should I?he-he-he...
...as 24-bit displays are now standard.
Standard for the manufacturer I'd imagine, but not for those that don't consider the *"web itself" an advertising vehicle... if you get my drift. (nothing personal, of course)
websafe - Thanks for the thread, and a hearty welcome. I wish I had more time, but I'll leave you with this one I had handy (note the date written):
-----------
Independence
Inside understanding lies
nearness. Outside of
dearness lies an
empathy of purportion.
People evolve themselves
even as they perpetuate
need and obfuscate
desire. Imbedded desire
endears others even as it
nefariously calls beyond
culminations of a prespect
excluding distinctions of mass.
9/11/2
Thank you for your welcome, musick, and for your poem! I do indeed note the date. The poem is densely packed, "chewy," and I will have to ponder it for a time.
Re your comment on 24-bit color:
Standard for the manufacturer I'd imagine, but not for those that don't consider the *"web itself" an advertising vehicle.
I'm only an amateur web designer, so if 24-bit color is not the standard, please enlighten me! Has it gone on to 32 now, or more? Or did you mean it was less? (I take "standard" to mean, what the majority of desktop-computer users currently have.)
I think I understand your phrase about the Web as an advertising vehicle ... the tone implies you DON'T think of the Web that way, and that you lament its direction. I can only agree.
I'm with you on the definition of standard in this case, and although the currently manufactured software and monitors support higher resolutions which have raised the standard, 16bit with a resolution of 800x600
"seems to be" the most widespread, currently used (ie. our definition) setup...
...but I'm sure there is data that can support other *facts.
... tsuwm - sjm - Capfka???
I'm afraid I followed a pretty laissez-faire practice in developing my site--checked it out on Netscape, IE, AOL.. didn't worry about how it looked on a Mac or on anything other than 800x600. (Actually®, I've had little (no?) comment on the design, which as far as I'm concerned is a good thing (since there *was no "design" per se).)
"I remember etaoin shrdlu, but have forgotten its origin just now."
Hi, Websafe. Those are the 12 most frequently occurring letters in English. So I've always been told, but my sister says it ain't so. She memorized the whole alphabet in order of letter frequency and "e" was still number one but the rest were different from the old "etaoin shrdlu" formula. And anyway it probably depends on what kind of English you speak.
It *was the most common letters, in order, once. It was also the order of letters on a linotype machine, the device that they used to use to set type for newspapers. The story is that if the type setter discovered some gross error that the proofreader had missed, he'd run his finger across that row and etaionshrdlu would appear in the copy. He'd send it back and it would get fixed. Only sometimes it wouldn't get fixed and the newspaper would go out onto the street with a line like:
President Hoover today announced that he etaoinshrdlu…
thought I heard my ears ringing...
President Hoover today announced that he etaoinshrdlu
Augh--reading this made me realize that I now think of etaoin as a person!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
empathy of purportion.
Oh, musick--I love you! What a wonderful word!
Augh--... I now think of etaoin as a person!
sorry, Jackie... [pout]
Hey, you chose the screen name! I can't help that I've personalized it! To me, etaoin is now you, not a line o' type!
As Faldo the Great (doesn't that just make you think of a circus clown?) points out, the letters etaoin are the five most common in the alphabet. Subsequent research has cast doubt on everything following that, so shurdlu may or may not be the right order (or letters) for the second five most used. Depends who's counting, I guess. Mergenthaler fell for it hook, line and sinker anyway, and I, as a machine typographer (i.e. linotype operator) had to live with that for ten years on linos.
On the linotype machine (hear that soap-box scraping across the floor to the front of the room), the first two columns on the left-hand and right-hand keyboard sections consisted of those letters, ie:
e s c v x
S t h m b z
P a r f g fi
A o d w k fl
C i l y q ffi
E n u - - - ? Memory lapse after 20 years!
constitutes the first section of the keyboard. The right-hand section of the board had more or less the same layout, but in capital letters, and the middle keypad had 25 "other" characters, the exact mixture depending on the font that was being used.
As was pointed out above (prolly Faldo the Great again) you would sometimes see a line of type in a column that had something like "and the weatetaoin shrdlu shurdlu etaion". What would happen would be that the operator (comme moi) would have either typed the wrong words first or for some other reason decided that the line wasn't worth completing.
Rather than take the matrices out of the assembler by hand and putting them back on the distributor bar (which was called "dissing the mats" and took time and effort), you'd just complete the line by running a finger down the first two columns of the left hand keyboard, pressing the spacebar in between. The spacebar caused something called a spaceband to fall down between the two sets of matrices.
The spaceband was two pieces of high tensile steel joined together by a tongue and groove arrangement. One was short, and sat between the matrices in the assembler, the other was tapered from very thin to about quarter of an inch wide. This was pushed up on the slide (the thin piece) in the mould to force the matrices that formed the words together, and to provide proportional spacing.
The operator (moi, encore) SHOULD have thrown the line back into the pot when it was dropped into the stick. Failing that, the proof readers SHOULD have noted the etaoin/shrdlu lines in the stick of type on the proof and marked them for removal. The stone hand (compositor) SHOULD have removed the line. But sometimes that didn't happen, et voila! etaoin shrdlu's your uncle!
HTH!
Faldo the Great (doesn't that just make you think of a circus clown?)
You'll think I'm a circus clown when I saw you in two.
Dear Capfka:
dissing the mats
That would be a cool title!
When I saw:
---e s c v x
S--t h m b z
P--a r f g fi
A--o d w k fl
C--i l y q ffi
E--n u - - -
I thought it was going to be an acrostic poem, but then it wasn't. Or is it?
You'll think I'm a circus clown when I saw you in two.
Do clowns do magic tricks now, or are you thinking about doing a remake of the "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"?
Some years back, I read a wonderful book on codes and cryptography, but can't recall its name just now. I believe they listed "etaonirsh" as the nine most common letters in the English language, in that order.
clowns do magic tricks now
Or either dozens of magicians pouring out of miniature little cars, one.
-----------------
Anyone can build walls.
Finding a reason to do so is easy…
overcompensating for some other sense,
real or not, it’s the very human reaction
to an intensity that originates on the outside.
Reflecting the nature of those building blocks,
even if they exude their true material, will be
seen as an impenetrable divider between the
scenery of the soul and the eyeglasses of the on-looker.
When do those that look through those glasses
assess the effect they have on the others and the
self that they seek to perpetuate, and how
do they feel about the realms that they take
extremes to… wondering about the waters they test.
striving for connection may instill the clarity
they seek to avoid. none can convince that
reality is clear enough with silence; that which
obliterates the propensities that all emit
yearning through. Again, too often do I see the
entrails of all those words yelled through the
deep, dark canyons that communicate to themselves.
5/24/99
-----------------
musick:
A fortress was destroyed ...
There is something very right-brain about this poem. I can definitely imagine it spoken-word over cool jazz, kind of Gil Scott Heron. Have you performed it as such?
websafe, if you're single and female, I think he'll want to marry you. :-)
...something very right-brain...
Moi???
Have you performed it as such?
No, but I can imagine it as such... I could hear it as a Joni Mitchell ballad... (with Jaco on bass, of course)
-------------
***MOVIE EYES***
WITHIN INTERPRETATIONS,WE
HAVE MANY DIFFERENT
ATTENUATIONS.EVEN
TIME HAS ITS OWN GRASP
I WOULD NEVER ATTEMPT TO
SANCTION ANY PERSPECTIVE
REVALATIONS ARE FORTHCOMING
EVEN WHEN IGNORANCE HAS
ALL IN MIND AT ONCE;
LIKE A ROLE THAT NEEDS
INVOLVEMENT, JUSTIFYING
THE STATE OF ITSELF, LIKE
YOUTH AT THE CINEMA.
11/19/99
--------------
There should be a * on the word "sanction", as it is of *bastardized meaning.
To Jackie: I can see that you really like teasing and joking!
To musick: I particularly enjoyed
JUSTIFYING
THE STATE OF ITSELF, LIKE
YOUTH AT THE CINEMA.It's interesting that you composed all these acrostic poems back in 1999, well before your path crossed this thread! Do you have a large cache of them stashed away? Do you have other puzzle-structured, coded pieces? It's a particular interest of mine.
To Jackie: I can see that you really like teasing and joking! Moi???
...all these acrostic poems back in 1999..."all = 2 out of 3" is an in *interesting extrapolation.
Do you have a large cache of them stashed away? Do you have other puzzle- structured, coded pieces?Yes. Yes.