Blue Mouse Monkey Blog

A depiction of John Nelson, the protagonist of Parts Per Million. The painting is titled 'Waiting for a Sign'. Mixed media on paper, mounted on panel.

There’s this other thing I’ve been doing these past few years; some people know about it, many don’t. When my writing friend Laura Stanfill posted her interview of me on her blog yesterday, it felt like a coming out of sorts. After all, what business does a visual artist and web designer have writing a novel? Well, the project started as a compulsion ten years ago, a story that took hold of me and wouldn’t let me go until I wrote it down in a rush. Then I went back and revised it. Again. And again. And again. I lost track of the number of drafts. Now Parts Per Million is a complete novel. Pared down, tight, thoroughly critiqued by many, and ready to go out into the world. The next step is finding an agent to represent the MS.

Laura’s a wonderful writer with a couple of novels under her belt already. I learned much for her when we sat together at Stevan and Joanna’s Pinewood Table critique group. I’m so grateful for her generosity in including me in her interview series!

Read Laura’s interview here: Novelist Julia Stoops on Anti-War Activism and Using Research to Build a Realistic Fictional World

Click for high-rez version to see the ripple texture in the dunes.

From the HiRISE site.

NOTE: Blue Mouse Monkey did not make this website! In case you were wondering, since this is how I format images of our sites when I showcase them on this blog.

It looks like a real online scientific journal, with the bland, conservative layout, the excessive line length, the pre-digital font (probably Didot), and that blue bar down the side! Hilarious! (Both the straight-from-the-tube color and the pathetic attempt at adding a decorative element). Not that I don’t like Didot or pure deep blues, but the combination works uncomfortably well in this parody.

Then there’s the journal’s policy: “The founding principle of the Journal of Universal Rejection (JofUR) is rejection. Universal rejection. That is to say, all submissions, regardless of quality, will be rejected.” There’s an editorial board of over 20 academics from institutions around the world to do that heavy lifting.

According to the Instructions to Authors, “The JofUR solicits any and all types of manuscript: poetry, prose, visual art, and research articles. You name it, we take it, and reject it. Your manuscript may be formatted however you wish. Frankly, we don’t care.”

You can subscribe to the JofUR for £120 per year. I’m guessing it’s pounds and not dollars because pounds look more exotic and academic and fancy.

The quarterly online archive goes back a couple of years, and each volume is labeled (empty). Except December 2010 (Vol 2, No 4), which is labeled (lost when server crashed – presumed empty).

But really, the best part is the Reprobatia Certa blog. JofUR  likes to share rejection letters. The reasons for rejection are numerous and unpredictable, and often quite funny, especially when the submitter replies:

Editor’s note: We received a submission from Noam Shabtai, The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel.

Dear Noam,

We are rejecting your submission on the following grounds: (A) you are not Noam Chomsky, and (B) you live in Beer Sheva, but did not include any beer in your submission. I hope you can see how thorough and agonizing our decision process was.

Best regards,
Caleb

–
Caleb Emmons, PhD
Editor-in-Chief
Journal of Universal Rejection

Dear Caleb,
I would like to thank you for the thorough review process, and for teaching me how to differ between right and wrong.
After revising the paper, it was submitted and accepted to the journal of universal acception (it is also known as the broadcast news on TV, in case you were wondering).

Best Regards,
Noam.

I think I’ll send them some drawings. They probably don’t get much visual art. It might be refreshing for them to reject it.

I am one of the few people in the world who doesn’t really enjoy playing Scrabble. And because I practice way less than everybody else, I’m not very good at it, which compounds my lack of enjoyment: I am guaranteed to be beaten.

But I like the Scrabble pieces, and tonight I used them to help me idea-generate nonsense-word names for a client. Their new business needs a new name, and one of the avenues we’re exploring is nonsense words. Think Etsy, Zappos, and Flickr. The Scrabble pieces were excellent raw material.

It was fun playing with the letters off the grid. I think it’s the grid that bothers me. (I don’t like crossword puzzles, either.)

Data-visualization virtuosos Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg create a hybrid “artform” (for lack of a more inclusive term) out of data sets. Straddling the realms of science, design, art, and exploration, these graphics reveal interesting patterns in data.

“Data visualization has historically been accessible only to the elite in academia, business, and government. But in recent years web-based visualizations–ranging from political art projects to news stories–have reached audiences of millions. Unfortunately, while lay users can view many sophisticated visualizations, they have few ways to create them.

To “democratize” visualization, and experiment with new collaborative techniques, we built Many Eyes, a web site where people may upload their own data, create interactive visualizations, and carry on conversations. The goal is to foster a social style of data analysis in which visualizations serve not only as a discovery tool for individuals but also as a means to spur discussion and collaboration.”

Carbon footprint of a Big Mac, by Tim Fiddaman

Visualizing data that isn’t normally visualized, or is presented in a new way, tells us different stories about the world. From a kid counting all the socks in his household, to trends in editing wikipedia, to a “social network” of the characters in the bible, Many Eyes shows us new patterns that hadn’t been noticed before.

Wattenberg and Viegas now work with Google on a project called the Big Picture Visualization Group in Cambridge, MA, with the goal of making visualizations available to regular  people via Google.

It’s up and walking around: the new Blue Mouse Monkey website. All done up extra-nice in HTML5 and all that good stuff. It’s a bit dodgy on IE 6 and other hold-outs, but really, I cannot keep caring about obsolete browsers.

Bye-bye to the old Flash site, which was beautiful, but invisible to iPods and iPads, difficult for search engines, and a total pain to keep updated. However, it’s too lovely to banish completely, and can still be accessed via a link at the bottom of the new home page.

I was able to tweak and re-use a couple of the animations from the old site, on the contact page and the ‘404 page not found‘ page. I do love Flash. It was fun to use, great to make entire sites from if you were aiming for something artistic and didn’t care about SEO. I hate to see it get downgraded like it has been, but one must move with the times. And move we have. Thanks to Jimmy Thomas for doing the fabulous CSS build.

Makara Beach, outside of Wellington, NZ

…when you’re busy, then you go on vacation. We were in Hawaii and New Zealand for a couple of weeks, visiting relatives. It was lovely. We really should get back there more often. What was also lovely was that Blue Moue Monkey carried on in my absence. Now that we have a project manager (John Redder) and a studio manager (Sheliese Gieseke), stuff gets done even when I’m not there! I am so thrilled to have them both on board. And of course Jimmy Thomas, who strictly speaking isn’t part of Blue Mouse Monkey, but he does so much work for us he may as well be. Jimmy built the new Blue Mouse Monkey website while I was away. We’re putting the finishing touches on it and hope to launch it this week!

It’s difficult to share the work we do behind the scenes of organizations, but at least we can show a screenshot. The Northwest Health Foundation needed an internal portal. They were tired of communicating via long email strings, and tired of piecemeal distribution of information. They needed an easy archive-and-retrieval system for their meeting materials from their multiple committees. Plus they wanted a central space for announcements, and an internal blog. Additionally, they needed to control granular access to this material: it was important to allow some committee members full access, and others access only to the minutes, materials, and blog posts relevant to their specific area of work.

We created an interface design based on NWHF’s public website, to make the new portal familiar and friendly to the staff who use it. We also used Expression Engine’s membership tools to allow granular access at different levels of membership. Named “B0utros” after a staff-member’s dog, the new portal has become the lively, always-accessible home to the foundation’s communications and record-keeping.