Regex and the Visual Context of Content
In my attempts at dinking around with regular expressions this week, I decided to use the Harry Potter books as my source text. Without any potential spoiler given away, the person “R. A. B.” becomes an important mysterious character at the end of book six. In attempts to see if Rowling had already mentioned this character, I did an analysis of each book looking for three words side by side, first starting with R, then A, then B. These were my results and my code.
I also thought it would be fun to grab all the dialog from a book, so I did that with the fourth book in the series. Code and Results.
In the reading for this week, I was reminded of my days in graphic design school and all the emphasis and important typography plays into the interpretation and desire of audiences to read the text. Its funny actually, my mind is constantly jumping back and forth over these issues.
So often I see text scandalized for the sake of a “wow” factor. It was my job for many years, and I begin to crave nothing more than the raw data… the raw strings. Give me the meat. If I like the taste by itself, then perhaps its worth my attention in the oversaturated media world we are in. I began designing websites with little to no visual wow factor, and information and content design became my primary ways of “designing” a set of information. Put the information in the right place, make it easy for people to get to it. Its one step away from the “Information wants to be Free” idea. Its the notion that I will put it in a zoo to make it appear its free… in its contained space.
But there’s no doubt that certain pieces of text need visual representation as a priority of their life in the public view. Darick Chamberlin’s Cigarette Boy, the last example in our reading, is a perfect example. The information itself needs an appropriate wrapper, and was successfully delivered in this piece.
You know, just like everything, its a balance. Its a lot like cooking steak. You can spend all day soaking a steak in amazing spices, and sprinkle and beat in others while its on the grill, but its still going to taste sub-par if its a bad piece of steak to begin with. You can season grissle to perfection, it just smacks the person eating it in the face, one way or another.
Start with a nice, tender, lean piece of steak (content), and the cooking will take care of itself.
WordPress database error: [Table 'grayfus_wordpress.wp_comments' doesn't exist]
SELECT COUNT(comment_ID) FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_ID = 32 AND comment_approved = '1';
WordPress database error: [Table 'grayfus_wordpress.wp_comments' doesn't exist]
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_ID = '32' AND comment_approved = '1'