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

Hmm. Clearer is difficult. I was trying to combine the relatively standard symbol for a radio mast with the figure 1. Maybe only techies would get it anyway!

That's a general problem with using symbologies in graphic art (as opposed to strictly representational stuff). You have to rely on the viewers being educated in the symbols (like Egyptian Hieroglyphs allegedly). My other idea was easy to "read" because most people have already been taught flags and driving symbols.

Did you get the joke in german? I was initially going to put it on the back of a picture of a car as a window sticker. I'd researched german number plates and everything before doing my symbol only version anyway. I was quite prepared to have to try that one again if no-one liked it.

After the author got back to me, I decided to invert the colour scheme to incorporate another thing which he'd mentioned. I was always planning to do the colour inversion anyway for the blue background one of the large sized design. However, now the symbol can have meaning for another group of people. Anyone who doesn't recognise the radio antenna will just see it as a spinning LP or platter with playing arm!

PS John Peel hasn't totally escaped humiliation yet...

HEY, Mina! Oops, I probably shouldn't shout at italics.
Anyhow I've uploaded the last(?) non-JP design - the big picture...

That's great! It looks really good. You're in if you can stand the pace.

The only comments I do have are that we tend to discourage animations, although we haven't banned them. If they are done, they have to rotate once only. As only the main entry will be used it's not particularly important this time.

I'm about to go for lunch, and when I get back I'll set you up as an artist. Congratulations.

Congratulations.

(you're not allergic to beer are you? damn, alcohol)

Yes - beer is bad. Water and skimmed milk are OK. I'm not allergic to cream though. I just don't like the sliminess!

To Mina:

That's a big "woohoo" for me then. It will be interesting to see when and how that changes my personal space. Last night I was looking up some stuff about messing with Brunel skin colours which I may try sometime. I'll lay off the animations in future. It was really just an experiment to see if the "radio waves" looked more convincing leaving the #1 antenna that way.

I suppose I'll find out what the pace is like soon - except I won't have access to my computer for xmas week. Also, bear in mind that I shall nearly always use symbology (cheat?!) instead of pictures, in case this makes a difference to whom you assign a particular project. I think graphic art is more fun than representational (especially since cameras were invented). Plus I don't like humans much, which means I don't practice portraits enough.

If you look at your Personal Space in the Brunel skin you'll see your new badge.

You should receive an email from yahoo to invite you to join the egroup soon. Once there, have a look at the files section. We don't currently allocate work to individual artists, we give out lists, and the artists choose from the list. I don't think that we have anything outstanding that needs a graphic, but browse around to familiarise yourself with the setup.


If you can send these pictures to us via our FTP server, we'll add them to the entries.

Welcome to the team.

I got your email. I tried to do the Yahoo thing but didn't get very far because it wanted me to sign in as a Yahoo member. I had already found out (when some science message board people suggested communicating via Yahoo) that I would have to lie in order to register for Yahoo because they have forms with non-optional fields to fill in which don't contain correct options for me! The others tried to convince me that it was OK to lie to Yahoo but that is rather against my principles. So I've tried replying to the email instead and will try the ftp thing shortly.

PS I saw the CA graphic appear. Is it someone's self portrait?!

It seems to have accepted you, but you will need to be a member of yahoo to participate - you'll need to be able to not only see other artists files, but to upload your own there.

I thought you said use ftp to upload stuff. I'm about to give that a try although I don't think the directories are as self-explanatory as the email suggests (the names and descriptions given don't match exactly). My guesses are that: you mean you only want the "big" rectangular graphics this time round and that that equates to Community_Art (with little "squares" being Edited_Guide and circles being Talking_Point). If I get it wrong you can always delete them!

We do, but we use yahoo as a 'peer review' type affair. The pictures are uploaded to the yahoo group, the other artists comment, and we can see them before they are uploaded to the ftp server. It's probably a little confusing to a newbie.

The FTP server's directories are for *all* of the images for a particular type of entry - for instance, these are for Edited Guide entries, so they all come into that directory. If you were doing a Talking Point graphic, you'd upload them to the 'Talking Point' directory. It makes more sense once you can see the yahoo files.

The ftp thing seemed to work OK. I could apparently upload but found no list of existing stuff. I take it then that the list of graphics waiting to be done (which you mention in your email) is on the Yahoo site not the bbc one. It looks as though I have to be a member of Yahoo (as well as the group) in order to view the messages of a group as opposed to just the group titles as a visitor. So unless you have a back-up email scheme, I suppose I either have to trawl the guide myself looking for requests for art, peer reviews and recently Edited entries or I have to lie to Yahoo about myself.

I had already noticed a request for polyominoes which I could easily do! It would also be easy enough for me to liaise with h2g2 researchers and to display possible graphics on my own site first. Though I lose even more anonymity that way so this site had better not be a base for too many stalkers, spammers etc.

OK I've ftp'd again and removed them from Community_Art into Edited_Guide. I can do the nerdy computer stuff. It's just the human stuff like being inappropriately pigeon-holed by Yahoo which is difficult.

I've found your graphics. Once I've uploaded them to the entries, you can post to the authors to tell them that their entries now have pictures.

We don't take requests from Researchers currently (although we are hoping to open the art to the Community in the New Year). We have five entries on the Front Page every day. When we schedule them, the Guide Team (Ashley, Anna, Sam, Jimster) pick one to be illustrated. They then give the Community Artists (via the egroup) a list. The artists also illustrate the Topic of the Week and the Talking Points which are on the Front Page for a week, and we give the list of topics that we chose to the artists, who divide them between themselves. We don't usually liase with the Researchers at all, as they never know whether their entry is going to be Pick of the Day (and therefore get a picture) until the day it's on the Front Page.

Does that help a little? I also had to lie to yahoo. Why do they need all that crap??

I've joined Yahoo now. It was a rather traumatic experience though. So now I need some to recover. They had recently changed the options on a couple of the questions (maybe someone else managed to complain) so I didn't have to lie to as many fields as I would have a couple of weeks ago, but it was still bad. Other people had already taken the obvious logons (I got a mutated one), but more importantly they wouldn't let me edit what that looked like in the visible profile section so you'd all recognise me (from here rather than real life) and I couldn't find out how to deregister and come back with a more cunning login.

It's allright in the end . We've been camapigning for something better than Yahoo but it's the best we've got at the moment.

Mina: I've told Dr.EV, the author of A447301, that there is a new graphic on the article but the other one, A412804, has lots of authors and is over 2 years old. Even if they were still around I doubt they'd be interested. Strangely though, one of them is also Dr.EV - obviously gets around a lot

You could post a message to the actual page of the article. No-one will notice probably, but then you've done your best

Unless of course you want to post messages to all those authors.

Great idea Wotchit! Many Researchers subscribe to entries that carry their names, so some might see it.