Happy Reformation Day! Have Some Musings.

On October 31st, A.D. 1517, a monk named Martin Luther sent a copy of ninety-five theses he had written to the Archbishop of Mainz (and may or may not have also have posted them on the door of at least one church in Wittenburg), kicking off a long and costly process that would come to be known as the Reformation. Isaiah 29:13 was just as relevant then as when Isaiah spoke it and Jesus quoted it to the Pharisees:

“This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.”

(And though the Reformation helped remedy that quite a bit, we're deluding ourselves if we think those prophetic words can't be relevant again in our own time!)

The Reformation is a long and fascinating tale with repercussions that continue to reverberate around the world to this day, one too long for me to cover in detail here. Instead, how about a nifty little historical fact about dates?

Five hundred years is a long time. In fact, it's so long ago that it actually predates the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in October 1582. Now, dealing with time differences is tricky, subtle, and gives me a headache, but if I've understood the formula in the Wikipedia article on the subject correctly, if we project the Gregorian calendar back to 1517 it would have been ten days ahead of the Julian calendar that would have been in use at the time. Thus October 31st, 1517 in the Gregorian calendar would have corresponded to (assuming I've done this correctly, which is by no means a sure thing) October 21st, 1517 in the Julian calendar, which I think means we still have another ten days to go before we can truly celebrate the Reformation's half-millennium birthday.

That, or we've missed it by ten days. Honestly, I give it even odds either way.

On another, less date-heavy note, I've also got a video of another flag-vectorization! This also relates to the Reformation, because it's the flag of Saxony, the principality where Martin Luther lived and whose prince gave him sanctuary from the Pope and also helped kick off the Reformation. Anyway, here it is:

While making this video, I was struck by the incredible utility of Bézier Curves, which are the lines you see me bending and shaping to form the outlines of the green surface. I'd like to talk about them more at some point, but it's getting late and this post is already long enough. So another time, and for now, Happy Reformation Day everyone! Let's bring back Reformation Day as a thing.

And if I might indulge in some linguistic musings: “reformation” is made of the roots re- (as in again) and formation, meaning to make or create. The Hawaiian term “hana hou,” sort of the Hawaiian equivalent to “encore,” is made up of hana (with a range of meanings related to “work, make, create, do, perform”) and hou (meaning “new,” but also “again,” so a call of “hana hou!” at the end of a performance means essentially “Encore! Do it again!”). So with a little liberalness of interpretation, “Happy Reformation Day!” could plausibly be “Hauʻoli Lā Hanahou!” in Hawaiian. (I checked the online Hawaiian diction and found no entries for “reformation,” so I can't confirm if this is actually correct.) Anyway, I should really end this ever-lengthening post. A hui hou! (Until we meet again!)

Vectorizing Kalundwe's Flag

Today flag vectorizing target is Kalundwe, a small nation in the heart of Africa so obscure it doesn't even have a Wikipedia page in English. It's part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo nowadays, though it was free for a few hundred years between approximately 1350 to 1600, according to what I could find. I realized I edited together the video and even uploaded it to YouTube but hadn't put it in a blog post yet, so here you go!

Kalundwe's starting location in Europa Universalis IV in 1444, nestled between the nations of Kuba and Luba.

Kalundwe was eventually conquered by the neighboring nation of Luba, and became associated with it. The design on their flag in Europa Universalis IV looks like it may have been inspired by Luba-Kalundwe royal cups such as the one seen in this blog post.

Not much else to say about this one, it was a fairly straight-forward tracing process. A hui hou!

Vectorizing Fezzan's Flag

Well, the wiki contest I mentioned in my last post finished this weekend, and I came in second place! I got a snazzy new avatar for the Paradox forums and a cool 75% off voucher. I also had (a surprising amount of) fun, so in celebration, have another flag vectorization video!

The 'W' is for 'wiki.'

This one is for the flag of Fezzan, a country in what is now modern-day Libya. The region has a long history, stretching back to when it was ruled by the Garamantian Empire from 500 BC to AD 700. By 1444 it was a small independent kingdom, assimilated into the Ottoman Empire in the 17th century (though in Europa Universalis IV the Mamluk rulers of Egypt tend to get it first!).

Fezzan's location and size in 1444.

A nice and simple little flag, and symmetry made it twice as easy to do. Hope you enjoyed it, a hui hou!

Vectorizing Ryazan's Flag

Well, Paradox Development Studios just released a large patch and expansion for Europa Universalis IV last week, and that means it's time to update the wiki! To make it more fun there's a contest with a raffle involved for people who contribute, and one of the ways to contribute is higher-resolution flag images. (The previous such contest, back in April, is what got me started doing it in the first place.)

As such, this is the perfect time to do a whole bunch and upload them, so I've done quite a few this past week, and recorded the process of some of the more interesting ones (some flags are quite simple, which makes for easy, but not-especially-interesting vectorizing). I'll be releasing some more such videos in the next few weeks as I get around to rendering them, but in the meantime I thought I'd share one now.

This video shows the process of vectorizing the flag of Ryazan, one of a number of small independent principalities in the 15th century located in what would later become Russia. The principality of Muscovy was simply one such principality which steadily grew bigger and bigger by assimilating surrounding principalities until it morphed into the medieval Russian state.

Ryazan's location in 1444. (It's the small brown nation in the center.)

As the subject of the video is Russian, I went with some nice rousing Russian music from Tchaikovsky.

No, I don't know why that horse has no ears.

Vectorizing Illiniwek's Flag

The Illiniwek (or Illinois) Confederacy was a group of some twelve or thirteen tribes living in North America, in roughly the area of the state they would give their name to. The name comes from nearby Ottowa tribes, and means “he-who-speaks-the-common-way,” though the Illinois referred to themselves as the inoka, a term of unknown meaning.

Picture of the Illiniwek from Europa Universalis IV as they start the game in 1444.

In Europa Universalis IV the Illiniwek are represented as a single entity, with a no-doubt fictional flag. It's a fairly simple and clean design, though, so one day I got the urge to go about vectorizing it, and here is the resulting video:

Hope you enjoyed it! A hui hou!

Comparing Edifices with SVG

I wanted to make a quick post and share some cool SVG files I found on Wikipedia the other day, because they're just too neat not to share. Clicking on either of the following links will open the file in a new window. Each one shows a comparison of multiple related things—the first shows a number of the largest pyramids (including modern skyscrapers that are somewhat pyramidal in shape) and the second shows various large bridges from throughout history.

Pyramids

Bridges

In each case, mousing over either the pyramid/bridge or its name will cause both to light up. Clicking on one will cause it to remain highlighted, allowing you to easily compare two or more edifices. Clicking on the little 'i' in a blue circle near a name will take you to the associated Wikipedia page.

I really love these kinds of comparative schematics, and would love to be able to make something similar someday. It's really quite impressive what you can do with scalable vector graphics. I hope you've enjoyed them as much as I have. A hui hou!

Speed-Vectorizing Saruhan's Flag

I've got another flag vectorization video today, this one for the tiny nation of Saruhan.

Saruhan doesn't exist in 1444 when Europa Universalis IV starts, having been long incorporated into the nascent Ottoman Empire. It was one of the Anatolian beyliks, small principalities or petty-kingdoms established in Asia Minor by various Turkish beys (roughly equivalent to the feudal European term “lord”). The beyliks formed in Asia Minor in the vacuum of power left after the decline of Seljuq centralized power following the Mongol invasions; among them was the beylik of Saruhan, on the western coast of Asia Minor adjourning the Aegean Sea.

Saruhan's flag. Saruhan. Not a similarly-named wizard…

The Ottoman Empire itself started as just one among many beyliks, in the north-western part of Asia Minor, before conquering or otherwise assimilating the other beyliks one by one until it began to expand out of Asia Minor. Saruhan was conquered in 1410. In Europa Universalis IV Saruhan doesn't normally exist, but can be released from the Ottoman Empire.

As a possible nation, it needs a flag, and here I suspect Paradox Development Studios (hereafter just “Paradox” for simplicity) of putting in a shout-out to The Lord of the Rings where Saruman's emblem is a white hand on a black background.

You see, the nation of Aragon (eastern third of the Iberian peninsula, historically joined with Castille to form modern Spain) has an amusing mission that can pop up, named “Defeat Saruhan.” The mission involves conquering a province Saruhan historically held, and is described with the following text:

Saruhan sounds a lot like a threat to the Lords of the West. If Aragon is ever to fulfill their destiny Saruhan must be defeated.

Thus Paradox is certainly well-aware of the similarities, and quite willing to add an in-joke to their game. I suspect that Saruhan's flag is another such joke, as it's highly unlikely such an old, minor state would have an actual flag available to use.

Anyway, have a video of me vectorizing the flag:

---

Since doing the last of these videos I've changed both my screen-recording software and video-editing software, which I figured I'd note here for any other Linux users aspiring to do similar things.

For screen recording I'm now using Simple Screen Recoder by Maarten Baert instead of Kazam which I was using before. SSR is actually much more powerful than Kazam (which is truly simple), but for the majority of cases you can just leave all its default values alone and it'll be fine. It's simple to use, and the additional power and complexity is there if you want or need it. It unfortunately doesn't come as a Debian package so I had to build it from source, which put me off of trying it for a few months, but it wasn't too difficult to build and is well, well worth it in my opinion. (It does come pre-packaged for a handful of other Linux distros, so be sure to check.)

After running into a whole bunch of crashes with OpenShot Video editor which I was using, I scoured the Internet for any available non-linear video editors for Linux, and tried several. None of them fit my needs and I was about to give up until I tried the very last one I'd been able to find, Kdenlive.  This is by far the best video editor I've found, combining simplicity of use (bar a few minor confusing but easily-learned quirks) and powerful editing features, such as the ability to see the background when writing a title to be overlaid on it. (An ability not to be underestimated, and one which every other editor seemed to lack.) Also it makes speeding up clips much, much easier than OpenShot did (and which one otherwise-decent editor I looked at couldn't do at all!).

Anyway, I hope that helps any aspiring video-makers on Linux out there. A hui hou!

Speed-Vectorizing Urbino's Flag

I've got another flag speed-vectorization video today (I really need a pithier name for these things). This one focuses on the flag for Urbino, a city in Italy a bit to the north and east of Rome.

Urbino was part of the lands given by Pepin the Short to Pope Stephen II in 754–56, marking the beginning of the Papal State as a political entity. The city and surrounding area were ruled as vassals of the Papal State until it was finally annexed in 1626.

Urbino is the small blue country circled in the middle. The Papal State is the cream-colored land around it.

I'm not sure why Urbino's flag in Europa Universalis IV is different from the actual Urbino coat of arms shown on the Wikipedia page, though given how small the flags are in-game the real thing might not look very good. It at least looks to be partly inspired by the branches in the real thing.

This map took me the longest of any one shown thus far, about an hour and a quarter. Mostly because I took far too long to realize just how symmetric the branches, leaves, and the… yellow things are. What are those supposed to be, anyway? Berries?

Anyway, hope you enjoyed it. A hui hou!

Flag Speed-vectorization: Sadiya

Today I've got another speed-vectorization video, this time for the tiny nation of Sadiya in the region of Assam. Historically this kingdom lasted from 1187 till about 1524 when it was absorbed by a neighbor. (The flag shown on Wikipedia looks different from Sadiya's flag in Europa Universalis IV, but I think the one on Wikipedia is actually the coat of arms for the Sutiyah dynasty that ruled Sadiya.)

Sadiya's location and extent in 1444.

While trying to upload it, I discovered Blogger has a limit of 100 MB on uploaded videos, which the original version of the video exceeded. One reason I haven't utilized much video content on this blog over the years has been this hazy awareness in the back of my mind that such a limit existed, and since I think I'd like to have a bit more video content in the future I decided to just go ahead and put videos up on YouTube, then embed them here, so I don't need to worry about trying to keep them small. (Although, amusingly enough, I re-did the video after noticing an error in it and the new version is back below 100 MB.)

Hope you enjoyed it! I've got another such video that I took footage for and just need to edit, and I may do a few more as they're a lot of fun to do. But definitely let me know if you found it interesting! A hui hou!

Inkscape Education

In the video in my post two weeks ago, I said that Inkscape didn't have a way to make a variable-width stroke. Last week I decided to double-check that, and it turns out it actually can, sort of!

Now, it's still technically true that you can't do a variable-width stroke because of how Inkscape handles things behind the scenes. But to understand, let's talk about strokes, fills, and paths with the help of a visual aid:

So because that's probably clear as mud, let me elaborate. Inkscape works with what are known as Scalable Vector Graphics, or SVG. Objects in SVG have attributes called fill and stroke. Fill is what, well, fills the object, while stroke is the outline around it. These attributes can be simple, solid colors, or gradients (linear or radial), or even patterns.

Lines in SVG can either have the ends connect or not. If they do, you get a 2D-shape called a path (the three objects at the top of the picture that have both fill and stroke are all paths). If not, the line's appearance is controlled by its stroke, where the width is a single number that controls the width at all points. (You can have a fill on an open line, but it will usually look rather strange. It can be used to good effect in some cases, though.) Technically, you still can't have a line with a stroke that varies in width from point to point.

What you can do, however, is use the Powerstroke path effect. (To activate it, go to Path→Path Effects… then click the '+' button to add a new effect.) This changes a line into a path, and adds some handles that can be dragged to vary the width of the path at arbitrary points.

Now, by making the line a path, what was once merely a 1D-stroke is now a 2D-fill, and the new path can have a completely new stroke set (like the purple-stroked path in the bottom-right corner of the picture). And unfortunately, because it's changing the width of 2D-object, the Powerstroke effect sometimes produces rough transitions, as can also be seen in the picture. If you vary the width too much from point to point you'll probably need to do some hand-smoothing of the result. However, it's still the closest thing to a truly variable-width stroke there is, and can be quite handy if used well.

I've actually learned quite a few new things about Inkscape over the weekend courtesy of the nifty website goInkscape, which has a whole bunch of tutorials showing how to things I never knew you could do. For instance, I found out you can create arrays of clones of an object similar to the way can do so in Blender in 3D, which I plan to make use of in the future. If you're using Inkscape at all, check it out! You'll probably learn something. A hui hou!

Flag Vectorization Timelapse

Hobbits, in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, give gifts to others on their birthdays, so have a little something from me today! Well, alright, my birthday was Tuesday so it's a bit late, but that's just how it worked out.

After last's week's experiment with narrating a flag vectorization, I decided to try something different and record a timelapse version of another flag sans narration. I vectorized another flag (for the Navajo this time), then sped up the footage by five times (and added some music and annotations).

Making this video turned out to be surprisingly confidence-building. I've watched timelapses of people making art on YouTube and found them rather intimidating, because I wasn't really noticing all the times they rubbed out something they'd just drawn, or went back and tweaked something. I just saw this linear experience where the artist starts with a blank canvas (or whatever) and proceeds to crank out some amazing piece of artwork like an assembly line. When I recorded this video and watched it I realized I'd been missing all those little experimental excursions, all the stops and false starts that make up the finished product because I could see them in my own work, and that allowed me to see them in other peoples' work as well, and that's a surprisingly powerful observation. I've pointed out a few places I missed something or had to go back and fix something in the video, but there are a few more I didn't point out.

Also, apparently the recording didn't pick up the options dialog I was clicking on near the very end of the video, so when it says I'm “fixing” things and apparently randomly waggling the mouse about I'm actually reverting an option I'd changed right before recording out of curiosity. Though watching this video, I feel like I do do a lot of random-mouse-waggling—I guess it's just the computer equivalent of talking with my hands.

Anyway, like with the last video, please let me know how you liked this one! I like this idea a bit more, as it has several advantages: shorter (and thus smaller) videos, and not needing to talk, think, and vectorize at the same time (which turned out to be more challenging than I'd expected!). And I personally prefer the dynamism and action in timelapses, so there may be more of these in the future. We'll see! A hui hou!

More Flag Vectorizing

Since my last post on the subject I've vectorized some more flags, and thought I'd share some more of the interesting ones. They make for great Inkscape practice—kind of like an artist's quick sketches.

Hsenwi

Hsenwi is a small nation in the Burma region with this cool script on their flag. I was able to copy it using almost entirely circles and circle arcs.

Inca

Inca are, well, the Inca; or Tawantinsuyu as they called the empire (literally, “The Four Regions”). I mentioned it in my first post, but it bears repeating that these flags are primarily for identification of different nations in Europa Universalis IV, as the very concept of a nation-state and a national flag were only really formulated and developed in the time period the game covers. The Inca, for instance, most likely never actually had a national flag.

Khorchin

Khorchin is a Mongolian nation north of Ming China in 1444, with cool script on their flag. This one took a long time to copy due to the varying widths of all those lines. I figured out a much better and faster way to copy them about half-way through, but it still took a while.

Theodoro

Theodoro is a tiny nation in the Crimean peninsula, the only one with Gothic culture still left in 1444. This flag involved a lot of work tweaking Bezier curves on the right side, then copying and flipping it to make the left side.

Tlapanec

Tlapanec is a small nation in Mesoamerica, in modern-day Mexico. This flag involved a lot of playing about with color gradients on outlines (or ‘strokes’ in Inkscape parlance). Each of those toes has a separately-positioned gradient for both the stroke and fill (Inkscape-speak for the interior), for instance, plus another two for the foot and a few more for those shiny effects around the edges of the various circles. There's also some blur effects to create the fuzzy highlights.

Verden

Verden is Prince-Bishopric in the north-western part of the Holy Roman Empire in 1444, now part of Germany. I don't have much else to say about it, but those keys were fun to trace.

Vijayanagar

Vijayanagar, for a change, is a moderately large nation in 1444 in southern India, which historically lasted for around 300 years from the 14th to the 17th centuries. In EU IV it's in a prime position to go on to form an ahistorical early united India and dominate the trade between China and Europe. It's also the first nation I played where I felt I really had a grip on most of EU IV's mechanics and went on to actually do well and expand, leading to the giant green nation in and around India in the screenshot below (and a special place in my heart):

The name is anachronistic now, as Hindu nations now form “Bharat” rather than “Hindustan” as of a few patches ago.

Finally, I also have something completely new for this blog! While vectorizing some of these flags, I had an idea: why not record the screen and my thought process and post it here? I've never tried something like this before, so it's a bit rough around the edges. The flag I vectorized is the one below, for the tiny nation of Khodynt in eastern Siberia. (Calling them a state is a bit of a stretch, as they were more of a migratory tribe than an organized state.)

Khodynt

The video goes through the process of making a vector copy of a flag, accompanied by my rambling and semi-distracted commentary. I don't know how useful it is as a guide to Inkscape (which was part of my intent for it), but if you ever wanted to know what goes into making one of these vector copies it's a decent illustration of the process. I apologize in advance for talking half under my breath half the time. For fun, you can also count how many times I refer to ‘flags’ as ‘maps’ for some reason.

I'm interested to hear what people think of this experiment, and if you'd like to see more content like this. I'll probably make some more videos in the future, as it turned out to be a lot of fun. I'd like to try doing a sort of timelapse video where it shows the whole process of vectorizing a flag at an accelerated speed. Just let me know in the comments! A hui hou!

Vectorizing Flags

The Europa Universalis IV wiki had a contest running for the last two weeks to help get things updated after the new 1.16 patch, but along with all the needed text was a request for higher-resolution versions of a whole bunch of country flags which previously existed only as tiny 192x128 pixel images. I figured it'd be a fun chance to brush up on my Inkscape skills, so I vectorized a number of flags and created higher-resolution versions. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out, so I thought I'd share some of the more interesting ones. These aren't actually the vector images themselves, just PNGs, as SVG images often still don't play well with some web browsers.

Berar

Berar is a small Indian nation that doesn't exist at the start of the game in 1444, but can appear later on. This one was a fun exercise in tracing the entire outer shape, followed by removing the cutouts using the difference operation on a series of paths with the main one. (A path in Inkscape is essentially any arbitrarily shaped object defined by a series of vertices and spline curves between them such that they define either a curve or an area. They can have a large variety of mathematical Boolean operations such as union, difference, intersection, exclusion, etc. applied to them. This lets you build up a path from a collection of smaller paths, or, as in this case, punch out a bunch of holes in a large path.)

Caddo

Caddo is a North American nation from the Mississippi region. Of course, whether they ever actually had a flag like this questionable; all nations in EU IV require a flag for identification, but given that it covers the whole world from 1444 to 1821 there are a lot of little nations that likely never had an official flag, so Paradox Interactive has to come up with something based on…I don't know, really, presumably important symbols in that nation's history and the like. Anyway, regardless of its historical veracity, I like the geometric shapes on this one.

Kazembe

Kazembe is a small nation in the interior of Africa, one of the new nations added in the 1.16 patch in fact. This one was a massive amount of fun to trace for some reason despite (or maybe because of?) the slight asymmetries present throughout the entire thing.

Quito

Quito is a small nation in the Andes, in modern-day Ecuador (and lending its name to Ecuador's capital). This is another nice set of geometric shapes (I did tend to pick ones that would fairly quick to do, rather than ones having complicated images).

Riga

Riga is a tiny nation on the Baltic Sea in 1444, now the capital of modern-day Latvia. That staff on the right took a lot of time trying to replicate all the little bumps in the original image (and having to guess a lot, given the tiny resolution). Most of the bumps are actually small circles added to the path of the staff.

Sioux

Sioux is a nation in the Great Plains region of North America, with some cool geometrical shapes. Getting the rotation and placement of the tipi shapes around the edge was an interesting challenge. (Also, go read the article on tipis on Wikipedia, it's pretty interesting.)

Tarascan

Tarascan is a Mesoamerican nation towards the western edge of the region, and historically one of the largest rivals of the Aztecs. Similar to the Berar flag, this is just a large circle (with a radial gradient) with a whole bunch of shapes punched out of it.

Tyo

Tyo is another of the new Central African nation added in the 1.16 patch. This was a great chance to use a clipping mask; each of the little half-circle shapes is actually part of a full, nearly-circular ellipse, with a copy of the brown background circle serving as a clipping mask so you only see the parts of them inside the circle. This one was quite fun to do.

Yaka

Yaka is the third new Central African nation here (being new, they didn't have high-resolution flags so there were several to do). This was a pretty simple case of vector tracing.

Finally, here's the flag of Kutai, a small nation on the eastern shores of Borneo. This one took a lot longer than the others (which typically took less than twenty minutes) due to the amount of detail present:

Kutai

I did this one because I really liked the original flag, and once played a game as Kutai partly because of that. By the way, here's the original file I was working from (I'm not sure why the tiger's tongue is orange):

Yep, that's the actual size. (Same for all of the other flags, of course.) While most of it wasn't too difficult to vectorize (just time-consuming), I couldn't really recover any detail from that crown thing, so I kind of made something up based on what I thought it was supposed to look like.

All in all, a fun little project, and it's been fun to get back to working with vector images again. A hui hou!

Astro-Art: Saturn in SVG

When I put together those pictures of Saturn I used to illustrate the scale of Saturn's ring system last month I went to a lot of trouble to make all the rings consist of two mirrored halves, with the intention of using them to make the illustration in perspective (by hiding one set behind Saturn, then squashing both sets symmetrically inwards vertically, if you're curious). Along the way I decided I liked the straight-on overhead view better and ended up not doing it, but the capability remained, so today I decided to blow the virtual dust off the file and see what I could make of it. I had to make a new radial gradient for Saturn, but I think it came out looking pretty nice:

(Despite the title, this is just a plain old PNG image, as Blogger unfortunately doesn't take SVG images directly. But the original is SVG, anyway. See how many of the rings mentioned in my previous post you can spot here!)

PSA: “Shellshock”

PSA: If you use any form of *nix as your operating system – some form of Unix, Linux, or Mac OS X – and you have the Bash shell installed, you may want to see about updating it. This is because of a newly-disclosed critical vulnerability in it (dubbed by some “Shellshock”) that could potentially allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with a specially formed attack. (If you're on Windows you're probably ok, unless [possibly] you're using something like cygwin, in which case you're probably tech-savvy enough to look up how to fix it.)

It's quite easy to check if your version of Bash is vulnerable: open up a terminal window and run:

> env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo this is a test"

Should Bash be vulnerable, it'll return:

> env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo this is a test"
> vulnerable
> this is a test

If it's not vulnerable, you should just get back “this is a test” and possibly a warning about Bash ignoring an attempted function definition. If it does return vulnerable, you'll want to see about updating your version of it as soon as possible (most [all?] of the major Linux vendors have released patches, and Apple is expected to do so soon). Basically, instead of a harmless “echo vulnerable” (which just prints the word “vulnerable” to the terminal), an attacker could potentially put a much more harmful command in there, which in the right circumstances could do a lot of damage.

One noteworthy feature of this bug is that it's apparently been around for something like twenty years (Bash is fairly old as software goes), so it's expected to be found in as incredible number of devices, including a large number of the servers that host the World Wide Web.

It's still early yet to see what will come out of this, but it's likely to be a serious security issue for quite some time due to the difficulty of getting everything patched.

(I was feeling creative tonight, though I may have been a bit too literal.)

Edit (9/27/14): I wasn't entirely happy with that version so I went back and played around with it some more and made a few more versions (and learned some useful lessons about Inkscape in the process). Here's the version I currently like the most:

The Art of Inkscape.

After talking about Inkscape yesterday I wanted to show a picture I'd created in it which I thought I'd posted at some point. A thorough search of the archives failed to turn it up, however, so perhaps it was one of my post ideas that never got used. I shall rectify that now, by presenting you with this picture I made using Inkscape:

Just so you know, I didn't create that from scratch; I based it off a real photograph I took, which you can see below. You can judge for yourself how well I did.

Plumeria flowers, the white-and-yellow kind.

Daniel's Software Musings (Part 3)

Once again I return, with more reviews of programs that may or may not knock your socks off and/or change your life. The ones I'm reviewing today, probably not. But they're still nice programs.


Creativity

Inkscape

You may not be aware of the fact, but there are actually two different ways to store graphical data digitally. One way is called raster graphics, which is probably what you are most familiar with since that's the kind of graphics that digital cameras put out and programs like the GIMP work with. It consists of storing an array of numbers that translate to colors to make a picture. It works great for photos, but has a few disadvantages such as the fact that you can only expand photos so much before the underlying graininess becomes apparent. The other way is known as Scalable Vector Graphics, or SVG for short. This involves storing a picture as an actual collection of shapes that are drawn at whatever resolution is required. If you draw a line in an SVG image, you can zoom into that line as much as you want and it will never appear blocky or pixelated. This makes SVG an obvious choice for  pictures that may need to be drawn or printed at many different sizes, such as logos. However, you can use SVG for much more than simple logos. You can create some fairly complicated pictures with a bit of work, and there are even comic strips on the Web drawn entirely in SVG. That's where Inkscape comes in. It offers a powerful interface for creating and editing SVG images. If you need to, you can even export your image as a PNG file (a raster graphic format). It also is capable of importing PDF files and creating SVG images from them, since they use a similar technology. All in all it's an excellent program for dashing off a simple logo, or laboring over a complicated masterpiece. I don't really have that much more to say about it, but I do have a picture I created using it that I'll be showing in an upcoming post.

Recreation

VLC Player

VLC Media Player is a simple little program that will play pretty much any video (or audio) format out there. It comes with its own codec pack so you never need to worry about having to download additional codecs. This is another program about which I have little to say, as it does its job and does it well. I don't actually watch videos much (and use Quod Libet for music) so I don't use it very frequently, but I've found it to be a very simple and workable program. It also has another function I just found out about recently: you can use it to convert audio/video files from one format to another. Very handy in an emergency situation when you need a file converted. It comes with a bunch of presets for the most common formats, but you can pick your own as well. This simple little tool makes a great addition to your digital workbench.

Miscellaneous

f.lux

If you, like me, use your computer after the sun sets (perhaps much later), you may want to check out f.lux. This interesting little program adjusts the color temperature of your screen according to the time of day. The idea behind it is that the light given off by computer screens mimics the light given off by the sun, which is fine during the day, but probably not something you really want at night. In fact, there's a growing body of research that indicates that too much light at night is detrimental to human health for a variety of reasons, such as interfering with normal melatonin production. Anyway, what f.lux does is adjust the color balance of your screen to be more red after the sun goes down. Since red light is less energetic than blue light, this should in theory help prevent some of the circadian rhythm disruption produced by being exposed to light late at night. How well does it work? Well, that's a good question. I didn't notice any dramatic changes in my sleep or sleep patterns after installing it, but then again, the changes it makes are rather subtle. I believe the principle behind it is sound, and I feel that the slightly redder screen at night is somewhat easier on the eyes, so I'm willing to continue using it. My advice? You may not see dramatic changes, but it can't hurt you, and may quite possibly be of benefit. It's easy to uninstall if you don't like it, at any rate.