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Pica Pica
                            cat Pica Pica Nago Nago Nago Nago
                            cat

dotAlthough I'm only an amateur artist, I've enjoyed making pencil sketches all my life. I've dabbled in most of the media available before computers, and now with that, too. A few years ago I made these renderings of two of the fuzzy critters here, Pica, a chocolate-point Siamese, and Nago (her son), a seal-point. They were done with a medium lead pencil on bristol board.
 
I've finally found some of my other drawings of the cats (hooray!), these drawn on high quality vellum, which I was trying out at the time. Below are two of them, pencil sketches of Pica ("Peek") curled against Subi, and one of Subi asleep alone. When I was recovering from the broken hip I got in our freak auto accident in 1982, our friend Carol Donner suggested I try drawing to occupy me when I could only sit or recline. Good ways to get the brain going again, too, and I thank her for her empathetic "therapy" (Carol is also an excellent artist, who works in many difficult media, unlike my self-taught scratchings.)

Pica&Subi Peek wi Subi Subi Subi
                            cat


subislips
Subi slips away

dotThe time I've been dreading finally arrived. Subi, the eldest of the original four critters, the tough little cat who outlived all his friends, is no more. He nearly reached 20 years old (6 1/2 weeks short), which is pretty amazing by itself (I've been told not much more than one out of 100 cats attain that age). You can also see how thin he'd become in the last two years. For more on saying good-bye to a dear feline friend, look at the photos and text on the Photos 2 Page. To see a larger view of this pencil sketch I made on his final evening, as he lay quietly on my lap, just click on the thumbnail view here.


HHrsemn

dotHere's a pastel image, which I drew while I was in college. It's a tongue-in-cheek takeoff of the famous Headless Horseman, and was based on a magazine parody illustration I had come across. With the jack-o'-lantern up on the horseman's neck, the idea of putting a football in the rider's right hand, about the way a player might actually run with one, seemed to be a clever idea at the time. By now the original, which is about 11" x 17", is showing some signs of wear. I retouched just a few of the worst smears in the dark sky and orange moon (pastel isn't very durable, after all!) after scanning the original drawing, and the final quality's surprisingly good. Notice the distinct look of soft pastels and pastel pencils on charcoal paper. And that odd "curlicue" near the bottom left is how I usually signed my stuff back then, my initials stylized into a visual pun on the symbol: @.


dotBefore completing the above Headless pastel I was trying to teach myself how to capture the feeling of light and shadow interplay in a drawing. It was as far as I got into an "Impressionistic" phase of the engrossing hobby of drawing. My dad used to collect a lot of illustrations and photographs that he also used as reference for much the same purpose for his drawings. We were sort of two amateur artists trying to learn from and with each other. A lot of pleasant memories there for me, you bet. One of the reference color photos we came across showed a young woman sitting in Central Park, holding a bright pink balloon. The parts that caught my eye were the strong backlighting and soft focus background -- not so easy to draw...
 
Ah-HA! This would make a most engrossing study, to try to draw a reasonably faithful version of the photo, using the pastels and pastel pencils, again on charcoal paper. I'd completely forgotten about this image, until a couple of weeks ago. While digging through some tall thin papers and cardboard and books, I discovered a matte frame my dad had given me some years ago when I went to visit both of them. It was while I was running for the Amtrak, so I hadn't had a chance to look through all of the small stack he handed me. Somehow this face down part of the stack escaped me when I got back home. I'm delighted to find the drawing again, long after the fact, and discover that it wasn't a bad early effort at all. I've scanned the 11" x 17", as above, done some mild cleaning of a few places where the none too durable soft medium had gotten slightly smeared, and present it to you above, a click away. Like Rossini's modestly titled late collection of some of his early music, this is one of the "Sins Of My Youth." Yup, the same curlicue appears at the bottom right, explained in the Headless drawing, right above this one.


PrGrace

dotBut one early pastel I had not forgotten about is this, of Princess Grace of Monaco. It used to hang in my parent's downstairs rumpus room, as those suburban miscellaneous spaces were called. I remembered it as the best color pastel drawing I had done during college, and would have loved to see it again. My dad and I searched for it several times, but it seemed to have vanished years ago. Perhaps it was damaged or taken down when the room was repainted, and then misplaced. It may even have been "borrowed" by one of their visiting friends, as some said they'd like a copy of it. No matter, I never expected to see it again. That went double when my parents recently moved to their charming new apartment, and sold the old homestead. It never surfaced during the move and cleanup.
 
But I was wrong -- here it was, carefully filed by my dad along with the above drawing within the same protective matte frame, face down, unnoticed for years. He hadn't even realized it was tucked in the other drawings. Sometimes when you dig around for other bits you strike a serendipitous chord, and *hey bingo!* you come up WAY better with what you do find, than what you were searching for. I greatly admired Grace Kelly, as many Americans did. Very intelligent and talented, she exhibited the grace of her name in everything she did. I love her work with Hitchcock, and he never did again find anyone who could hold a candle to her, imho. In the US we all accepted her move to Monaco and into real royalty, although we missed her presence in motion pictures. It was an emotional shock when she died in that automobile accident some years ago.
 
Back then I had no good models to pose for me. When I spotted the original photo in a magazine it seemed a wonderful challenge to draw her likeness. It was difficult, and my technique grew during the experience. It's surprising that I can even place the exact time I drew it. We were downstairs, watching the JFK Inauguration, during a heavy snowstorm which blanketed the whole NE, that January 20th. I was working on this drawing that very day, trying to do two things at once as usual. Hope it's worthy a smile to see it here, hi-res scanned and slightly cleaned due to several rubbings and bits of dirt picked up during 40 years (yikes!) of storage.


dotAbove is a recent drawing that I made after learning of the death of Stanley Kubrick, on March 7, 1999. It's very simple, a pencil sketch on plain white paper, drawn fairly small so that it would show up well at smaller size (very large drawings tend to look like all the detail is missing in screen-res reproductions, I find). I wanted to post some observations about my experiences of working with this legendary director, and thought a drawing I had actually made myself, however mediocre, would be a better personal touch than one of those often-seen photographs.
 
I'm sorry that I'm not a better artist, and that I was unable to get the resemblance quite right, although certainly "it's in the ballpark"(Stanley loved to use sports jargon.) I tried to capture him as I remember him, from some time in between "A Clockwork Orange" and "The Shining", the two films I worked with him. Later he wore glasses quite often, his hair got whiter and sparser in front, and with a few pounds of weight he gained during the final year or two, I was told by a mutual friend he had begun to look more and more like Henry the VIII, or even Falstaff, not such a bad pair of British images, where he lived most of his life. Of course when he spoke, what you heard was vintage educated New York-ese...


dotNext is one of my rare older oil-paintings that I still can locate. It was painted when I was still an undergraduate and taking an art course at Brown University, taught by Professor Roberts. I enjoyed the survey of mostly modern art, getting a better overall idea of which painter or sculptor followed whom, was influenced by or influenced whom, and where the usual temporal fence posts could be erected between the various "schools" and "periods" of art. The concept and lessons have lasted me a long time. To be truthful, I'd picked up some of it from my parents, who were also very aware of art and music and literature. My father has always enjoyed drawing and studying many mediums of art at home, so he had a lot of good books I used to enjoy reading through.
 
The class ended with a major class project for each student. You had to propose something you would make or create, using whichever media you might choose to work with, and write a short paper to describe the piece. Those who could not paint or draw could instead opt to do a nontrivial art analysis, writing a paper which described their investigations. Since I could draw a bit, I chose the former. But since Professor Roberts had always seemed interested in the newest strides, concepts and media, I tried to aim in that direction, trying something never done before. What he gave me permission to complete must have sounded a little mysterious to him, but I was encouraged to go ahead, hands-on.
 
You'll see a larger version if you click the above mini image of the painting. It also happens to demonstrate something that was right at the cutting edge at the time, the Retinex Theory of color vision, developed by Edwin Land, of Polaroid Company fame. Seen under a small spotlight the still life shown here looked to be a perfectly reasonable color painting. There are tones of red and purple and yellow and blue and green and orange, as well as neutral grays and browns. Yet there were only three tubes of pigment used: red, white and black. You can read all about what's going on, and get a pretty good impression of this simple little painting and how it made its own modest contribution on our new Color Vision Page. But don't forget to return here again for the other examples continued below!

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leafPhotos

Fireworks

dotIn the mid 70's I got my first really professional camera, a Rollei SL-66 2-1/4" affair, like a slightly bigger and "techier" Hassleblad. (Rollei still make a version of it, but the price has risen beyond belief!) I'd found a good condition used 250 mm tele lens for it shortly afterwards, and was anxious to try it out. A few friends and I staked out a perfect spot for the 1976 Bicentennial July 4th fireworks display, from the opposite shore in Brooklyn Heights. The pyro spectacle that one year was to be set off over the Statue of Liberty, in keeping with the USA's 200th Anniversary.
 
I got off quite a few decent exposures, mostly short time exposures (the camera was on a large tripod), and above is one of the best. You can see the statue just below all the flashes and color-crazed bouquets of light and pomp. Beneath the image of Miss Liberty note the glint of water in New York's bay, with a few light trails from small ships which moved slightly during the exposure. It was a display that was definitely worth the buildup, and none since has seemed quite so grand!


Koala

dotI brought the Rollei SL-66 with me on my second trip to Australia, in October of 1976. I was with a few other eclipse chasers (yes, we were successful on that part of the trip), which by the random odds of the moon's shadow placed us back in that country in just over two years (June 1974 we'd seen the previous total eclipse from a 727 jet near Perth.)
 
Lois Nelson and I were outraged when it became clear that on this second trip there were no plans to see any koala "bears". This was shortly before Quantas had popularized these marvelously plodding and soft-furred critters, and they were not yet synonymous with travels "down under". Lois made several phone calls, and discovered that just northwest of Sydney was Koala Park, a preserve that had most of Australia's marsupials and other unusual fuzzy-folk in a natural setting open to the public. We hired a taxi for the afternoon, and sped over the Sydney Harbor Bridge, grinning like Cheshires.
 
Despite the Spring drizzle and a drippier head cold, I had my first decent close-up look at koalas (they smell like cough-drops, will allow you to pet them if you have a tempting eucalyptus leaf in hand, and are certainly not as swift and alert as a Siamese cat...) We also got a good look at dingoes, wombats, platypuses, lots of 'roos, and a surprising number of birds. I used up several rolls of 2-1/4" film. This cute little guy is from a Cibachrome print I made, currently hanging over by my trusty old LaserWriter.

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leafWhimsy

dotMemorabilia Dept. -- Two Buttons

Ya' got me, these buttons aren't something I made, but rather are two whimsical mnemonics of the time I got them. There was no other spot on the site that seemed to fit these quite so well, so here they be. The one to the left below was handed out to hundreds of us at the Time-Life Building in NYC, mostly residents who in those pre-cable days couldn't obtain unghosted television broadcasts among the steel towers of Manhattan. It was the evening of July 20th, 1969. A sultry, overcast night fell upon us, as did a few showers, which only added to the heat and humidity discomfort. Life magazine had thoughtfully set up a huge projection video system on the new plaza (which was near completion) for the public to view the coverage of the first Moonwalk.
 
Rachel Elkind and I had a quick dinner midtown, and then walked to the corner of 6th Ave and 50th, to see if the view on their big screen was any better than the poor reception back on the small B&W monitor we had in our studio. It WAS better -- surprisingly decent, with a clear sound system to complement the fancy Eudiphor video projection unit. And there, surrounded by a large, spellbound crowd, we watched Neil and Buzz make their historic "small steps" for us all, even those who only gasped and cheered and cried there that Summer's eve.
 
You know, I've kept that large button ever since (shown actual size here -- sorry the moon's upside down...), as a memento of what seemed to be a more hopeful, optimistic time than this regressive period we are currently doomed to endure while the decade first, and then century/millennium increment by one each, in other small steps. (Nostalgia? You bet!)

big butn

sml butn

The much smaller button to the right above came a couple of years later. I couldn't find one at first, but a friend saved me one, and this is it. I'll not soon forget the odd way much of the recording and music industry "greeted" stereo sound (the operative word is pronounced: "Feh!"...). We noted a general reluctance to adopt stereo in many venues through the 60's, even as those famous wall writings were plain and clear to see. As Arthur C. Clarke so aptly says: "It is always wise to cooperate with the inevitable. Better still, to exploit it!"That's a dandy -- keep it in mind.
 
With tongues-in-cheek a few studios began displaying "Back to MONO" slogans on the walls in hand lettered signs. We all grinned knowingly. It was only a matter of time before some enterprising soul put out these buttons. I heard rumors of several engineers and producers who claimed credit, like Phil Ramone and Phil Spector (interesting coincidence -- the two "Phils" -- wonder if they're tenors? ;-), but could not confirm it. As a droll reminder that progress has NEVER been easy, I keep this pin/button around, just to maintain perspective. You might get a smile out of it either way: if it's new to you, or if this stirs similar memories in your head...


quadjoke

dotAt Last- It Can Be Revealed!

The TRUE reason that Quadraphony failed in the '70's!

As a joke gift to a CBS Records producer who was championing a pseudo quad system at the time, CBS's "SQ" (we wanted a true discrete system instead, a topic for another time), Rachel Elkind and I put together this absurd contraption. It's a four-eared quad headphone set, which we called the "Tempi Quadnaural Earphones" (Two channel phones = Bi-naural, so four channels = Quad-naural...)
 
One feature which wasn't immediately obvious is that once the race has evolved to have four ears (yes, I drew four of them on the Styrofoam dummy-head), there will be room only for a single cyclopean eye. Since this glorious day has not yet arrived, current homosapiens is presented with a bit of a challenge, as our young, hammy friend demonstrates on the right portion of the larger photo version. Anyway, now you know.


Face on Moon

dotAstronomical Cover-Up!

Sources inside the Jet Propulsion Laboratory revealed recently that the lab had agreed to a "cover-up" of sensational images recently processed at JPL. On the heels of the controversial "Face on Mars", comes further scientific evidence from the Clementine Lunar Probe of an even older "Face on the Moon". Dated as over a billion years old, several features of lunar terrain clearly form the visage of a face, with two eye-shaped regions, each hundreds of miles in diameter, looking skyward, above a surprised expression of some kind in a region best described as the "mouth". What is it trying to tell us?
 
Skeptics say this is purely an figment in the mind of the viewer, and that all these formations are a result of natural processes, like meteor impact craters or lunar volcanism. Proponents counter that the image seen here (after enhanced new computer imaging techniques) is evidence of extraterrestrial construction, proof that our moon was once visited by an ancient space faring civilization.
 
In an effort to shed light on what they call an "awesome discovery and government suppression of evidence", we are proud to release this contraband image newly smuggled out via the Net. Details should be forthcoming on the first of April.

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leafVia Computer Graphics

take a bow

dot"Take a Bow", is the title of the above image. It was drawn in isolated bits and pieces on white paper with a medium lead pencil, and then these components were scanned into Photoshop. There they were toned (some elements got reversed into negative image versions), layered, and assembled into this final view. The light effects were added using the Wacom tablet, as well as the beam of spotlight effect "drawn-in" on the final composited layers. Some of the clapping hands were scaled and rotated and copied to obtain several extra versions. Finally the dimensional text was put together in another layer and placed on top. The whole thing is part of a "round of applause" I wanted to send to my friends at Mark of the Unicorn during 1994, when they had just introduced a gorgeous and significantly enhanced version of Digital Performer, my (not so) "secret weapon" in making and shaping music and audio... And it continues to fascinate, inspire and provide many of us in these related fields with more powerful creative tools than we'd ever imagined possible.


God Fires

dot"Fires of the Gods", seen in the small view above (click it to see a large view, as usual) is a JPEG reduction of an experimental work involving Fractal Sets. This time the set was not the usual MandleBrot Set, but a far less well known one plainly called the "Wayne Set". Most of the images you can find on this numerical construct are not nearly as interesting as those on the more popular set, and it never will supplant it.
 
Evenso, it does allow one to create a few rather striking images. I had to explore for many hours to get the above view, and then I designed a custom KLUT (color lookup table), to give this nightmarish image a deep visage, like a lost scene from Disney's Fantasia. After generating the high-res version, I popped it into Photoshop and there made many small handwork enhancements and retouchings, to come up with what I thought best expressed the concept I had been trying to get. A few properties, the "hash" in some of the brighter colors, was impossible to remove entirely, but the overall effect is still good. Might make a handsome cover or art piece for an album someday.


Mandala

dotDon't you just love the look of marbleized papers, the endpapers you find in beautifully bound books, or as a background pattern or texture in books and magazine? I always wondered what this art form was all about, how the lovely intricate, but systematic patterns came to be. The solution just fell into my lap when I got the version 2+ update of Fractal's Painter program, now available through Corel. The manuals explained all, including a brief history (in a charming illustrated bonus booklet -- wonder if it's still available anywhere?) about this ancient art from the Middle East.
 
I'd been using Painter with a trusty pressure sensitive Wacom tablet to create natural appearing media imagery for a video project I became involved with in 1993. Later versions have the capability, too, of course, if less conveniently. I used to keep a version 2 and also version 3 on CD-R or a HD partition, to add many neat tools to my Photoshop work. Now I more often just use Painter X, which is quite good.
 
This image above uses Painter and Photoshop, and took some patience to get just right. It's a polar coordinate mapping of marbleized features, with unexpected symmetry, all in violet, aubergine and related cooler spectral tones. It's another image created while trying to perfect some skills at a new software feature or two, but now keep around for the dumb reason that "I like it". You may discover a version of it inside a new album I'll put out someday. Never can tell. Better still for now, take a look above, with a click to enlarge.

P.S. Just to bring this description up to date, Painter was sold to Corel in the early 2000s, and they still maintain this lovely program. (Metacreations also still has a page online that links to the newest locations, with some interesting background info, too.) And my ever stimulating friend, Kai Krause, who distributed Painter for a few years after Fractal abandoned it, has resurfaced (yeay). He's been working on several elaborate new digital projects, originating from the heart of Europe, with a company called ByteBurg. Lot's of good people out there!


Oyster

dot"World is my Oyster", above is a JPEG of an image that is both a visual pun, and a subtle use of Photoshop trickery. The overall image of oysters is assembled from scans of several 2 1/4" photos I made here one dinner, when we were lucky enough to find some fresh local ones. The fork was photographed separately. The globe of Earth is a hand-painted version of the famous Apollo 17 photo. I've gotten tired of seeing the same cloud formations, so did the rendering here "in the style and spirit of" the original, but all different. The shadow and many highlights and detail, as with the the Earth globe, were drawn using a Wacom 6" x 9" tablet, to allow a natural media look and feel you can't get with a mouse or trackball. And, oh yes, the idea itself has been hanging around in my head for a few years, and I just had to make this image to "exorcise" the thing out into reality.


Mars

dotHere are two images of the planet Mars. Hardly anyone seemed to have noticed that in the Summer of 1995 we passed an important U.S. Space milestone. It was the 30th Anniversary of the historic Mariner 4 Encounter with the red planet, on July 14, 1965. I still remember being at Columbia University and finding a buzz-on from some people at The West End Bar on Broadway one evening. The first images from Mariner were being published in the N.Y. Times. We all gathered around to look and chat excitedly about this "giant step", and the future. A wonderful time to live through, indeed!
 
Recently, while searching for something else in an old stack of papers, I came upon a long-ago set-aside issue of Time magazine from July '65, featuring the Mariner 4 early results. It refreshed my early excitement and wonderment. Out of curiosity I began looking online for more information about Mars. There's a lot there, more every month. A few choice sites, maintained by JPL and NASA (starting in the early 90s), post some fine, cogent, Mariner Anniversary information, and the more recent Martian probe results. Several sites also store copies of the image databases from the mid-'70's Viking Orbiter Missions. I downloaded a few which had the same region as that in the famous picture #11 that Mariner 4 took, and then went at them with my Mac, just for fun. (If I ever do this again, obviously I'll start with more recent raw images.)

Viking

dotAfter rotating and stitching together three or four overlapping adjacent images of Mariner Crater (as it's now named), after carefully manipulating the perspective, scale and angle of these, I managed to match fairly well a Mariner 4 image I found in an old astronomy magazine of the original 1965 best shot, #11 (scanned and fine-tuned). So the B&W comparison image above is a side-by-side view of what was first seen by Mariner 4, and what much better cameras took 11 years later, processed with mid-'90's software. The color image just above is the wider angle view, in near natural color, that I finally came up with. (Surprisingly, the newest Mars orbiter images are not much better for this region.)
 
The saddest comment on all of this is that we didn't get back (successfully) for any closer, clearer images for 22 years after Viking. Fortunately, there have been several successful probes, orbiters and landers, since the late 90s. Even so, after abandoning the achievements of Apollo (we couldn't build an equivalent to the Saturn Rocket right now if we tried (!) -- the technology, the plans/blueprints and the people who did it are long gone), the west has lost much its appetite for curiosity and adventure, for the moment. I wonder what might bring it back, more spacewalks and a Lunar landing by China, perhaps...? (Nah...)

new11

dotPostscript: We've recently discovered a wonderful new website of NASA's containing all of the Mariner 4 images in high res, and many other historical astro-images collected since then (this shot, 11e, is found on page 2 of the above link). You may enjoy browsing their whole site for yourself (bring the kids). Armed with much better raw image data from the famous pix #11, I thought it would be amusing to hand-tweak it much like the above earlier versions had been optimized, and upload it here. So above we have a "new" look at the same 1965 breakthrough photograph, looking about as good as it ever will. You'll see there's more detail, and both highlight and shadow regions are not so blocked up as before. The visual impression is rather closer to the Viking based image in the first comparison jpeg. We hope soon to see some Galileo images of the same location on Mars, and those ought be truly spectacular! (Update note: and so this came to pass, and continues to the present, images of the Saturnian system, rovers on Mars, and a new Mercury probe currently heading for its close encounter with the planet nearest the Sun.)


She's back

dotA few years ago my friend Linda Livingston at BMI (in LA) wanted to help me get me back into scoring motion pictures. I realized that living on the East Coast might be an obstacle to that, but thought it might be fun to do another score using some of the new tools and technologies I already use regularly (got the chance when I scored the independent feature for some film friends, "Woundings" aka "Brand New World"). How about some neat exotic tunings for a sci-fi or horror tale? Or smooth justly tuned harmonies for a smooth love story? Hmm... okay, we needed some sort of mailing.
 
I put together a small "Press Kit", with a bio and credits, and a cassette of excerpts-- all the usual. Linda had been making me laugh with her variation on the line from Poltergeist: She's Back!, so as an attention device we came up with this image. I used Photoshop to combine a scan of Pica in a cute pose, with my air-brushy drawing based on the promotional cover of the sequel film. In the process the sweet little girl looking at the TV set got replaced by the dour back of my adult head, this time inside the screen with a keyboard. (Well I thought it was kind of funny!)

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leafEarly Macintosh

Xmas '85

dotWe got our first Mac in March of '84. I began using it with MacPaint almost immediately. This is a Christmas card cover I did, with the four fuzzy critters around a tree. I drew several versions, and this was the simplest. It was tricky to draw with a standard mouse and no gray scale pixels! I'm rather amazed/amused I could still open the file after all these years, and turn it into a valid GIF format for you to see!

Cat Icons

Much later, having been customizing the icons on my Mac for years already (using ResEdit, natch!) I updated these versions in color. I'm still surprised by how many people who come here comment on them when they see my screen. Alas, Heather dog's image on the card above was too large to fit the standard icon space!


Songs
                          of...

dotAfter reading Arthur C. Clarke's novel version of The Songs of Distant Earth, I wanted very much to compose a music project deserving of such a fine title. First I wrote to ask Arthur if he'd mind. Generous to a fault, he said there'd be no problem, and encouraged me. (The music went on to become Beauty in the Beast, but that's a long story.)
 
The cover art, when it was still going to become "Songs of..." was something I toyed with for a long while, as the music went underway. I drew this little MacPaint image above to show the people at CBS what I had in mind at the time. But somehow it never clicked. Then Mike Oldfield went on to use the same title. A good idea whose time had come, I guess...
 
Another aside is that I'd planned on starting a small record label when my CBS contract was through (sound familiar?) The logo was going to be our tiny critter, Pica looking into one of my Grammys. So I drew that in. I still have the photo I took of her doing just that, playing "Nipper", on the wall in my studio. Alas, Tim Page also thought it was a nifty name for a record company. Catalyst Records lives!


MICA Screen

dotWhen our dear friend, LeRoy Doggett, died in April 1996, I wanted to find this image to put up on the site. Finally I located it. He was the head of the U.S. Naval Observatory's Nautical Almanac Office, a "Celestial Mechanician" by trade, but also a bright, witty soul-mate to us, who loved great wine, music, food, astronomy chats, and horrid puns, not necessarily in that order!
 
From the time they discovered the brain tumor to his peaceful, but tragic death it was but 5 months. And 54 is way too young, period paragraph. LeRoy wrought many important changes to keep the Observatory modern, including the use of Macs, when many PC snobs thought that GUI was proof of being "a toy".
 
One very forward looking project was MICA, for Macintosh Interactive Almanac (yes, there's also a Windows version available, and even DOS/MSDOS, too, or at least there was for many years). I saw that here was a way to get most of the information in the Astronomical Almanac (for astronomers) on a computer screen, but the graphics were rather plain. So I made this for him, even though restricted to black or white pixels, only one "bit" B&W computer imagery (you used random dot "dither" or halftone patterns to simulate the grays). It became the program's startup screen, and the cover of the manual. I'm kinda proud of that for many reasons, now especially.

Mica Icons

And I also contributed these color icons for MICA, a few years later, when color (and grayscale) finally had become available. The original "splash screen" has remained the original small B&W image above. I think LeRoy would approve that I show them now to you.

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