h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I just _knew_ SEF would be commissioned to do the artwork for this entry. Call it a hunch.

I had to fight for it and sulk dramatically a bit. I wasn't actually capable of drawing much at the time (too wobbly) and this one only involved pressing a few buttons to adapt some of my pre-existing work.

Sorry I didn't thank you earlier. I neglected to look for the credit, and also to mark up wanting to be informed of conversations on the entry (it is my first EG entry).
Now a bunch of questions (no one expects the Spanish Inquisition)
How did OwlOfDoom know you would be up for this? Do you have a portfolio hidden away somewhere? If you are moderately interested in knotwork do you agree with the suggested prescriptions I set down for authentic styling of knotwork?

I guess you are not too hidebound as your neat design consists of multiple loops. I was never particularly good at embellishing the knots I designed, but I did enjoy the challenge of reducing the loops to one, while trying to retain some aesthetic balance and symmetry.

Pimms

I simply read the poem on SEF's personal space very VERY carefully...

~

That's not all Owl - you used off-site information too! In doing so you made it much harder for yourself than taking the direct route of studying my PS even more carefully.

Hi Pimms. Do you remember me as your ACE at all?

I do have an enormous portfolio of stuff in the physical world. I've done real life paid commissions as well as personal stuff in different media. Owl was only able to see my web-site virtual world stuff.

In my own machinations I am very purist about the maths etc of knotting (no mere loops or waves). However, even many of the original ancient sources weren't this pure. They had loose ends, had splits and joins, were unevenly spaced, were not coloured as individual strands etc etc. For your illustration I chose to follow the modern trend in books and on web-sites as it was something of a change for me. Someone did liken it to Chinese work but theirs is not knotwork - being merely frets, weaves and closed loops (also like some Greek/Roman stuff).

However, I seem to have inadvertently upset Gnomon(?) who had apparently done some work on an image which wasn't even reported to the CAs. I think it wouldn't have been quite good enough to meet the h2g2 standards in its current state, but in principle I believe that authors should be allowed to do their own illustrations or find their own collaborators for this inside or outside the CAs. I'm probably about to be terminated for saying so though. It's a long story being covered elsewhere...

That's quite right, SEF. But I wouldn't have even thought about using off-site information had I not read your poem.

I saw some art gallery websites advertising work by someone with the same name as you, but I don't know if it was actually you.

~

No, that's covered in the poem.

Ah, OK. I thought it might be that you were referring to.

Sorry SEF I had quite forgotten your initial hello and conversation as ACE, what with the heady passage of events in h2g2 - almost three months ago now.

When I am a little less busy I'll try and work out who you are - all this cryptic stuff

I didn't mean to be negative about your knotwork I was really pleased to have such an intricate and colourful image

Shame about the misunderstanding re Gnomon's knot. I tried my best to liase with the subeditor about this but I realise no-one has the time to read all the backlogs of PR threads to know what has happened and be able to pass the relevant stuff on if they can't deal with it themselves.

I hope you can and make up.

Pimms
Now that your knotwork blob is in h2g2 I take it that it can be freely used in Personal spaces (like my own, when I update it )

I think everyone is allowed to use any h2g2 image on h2g2. That's part of the copyright waiver for contributors. However, in my case I let people use things anyway as I'm a not-for-profit entity. NB I added the spacing back onto that image after initially trimming it because I was seriously considering using it as a table/body background for a whole page.

It's probably about time I updated my own PS but h2g2 has been falling over so regularly that I've been largely restricted to making post and run hits (too risky to lose a whole page in the middle of an update if it then jams in some freak error even though I can have a copy off-site). I did manage to update the blobfinders page at A999994 once during this bad patch though.