Tom’s Image Gallery

Me

What is so special about the speed of light c? Only light energy can travel as fast as light and nothing can ever go faster. Suppose you are a celestial analog clock (like the analog timepiece modelled in geosynchronous orbit above the black and white checkerboard planet in Plinth Park – let us assume) and the time was 01:60:20 UT (Universal Time), 01:46:46 ST (Standard Time). There have been countless celestial analog clocks since the Big Bang, a regular procession of the clocks throughout the eons, but, one by one, every clock stopped. To commemorate the demise of a clock, loram gniebs, moral beings similar to us, yet not the same, erected a plinth. Visualize yourself as a celestial analog clock hurtling through space at a maximum velocity of 235,794,887 meters per universal second, 299,792,458 meters per standard second, which is equal to c. From your vantage point, time is standing still momentarily, but from the point of view of the cosmos, including that of Humanity going about its day-to-day, routine affairs on planet Earth, time flies slowly. Test the hypothesis.

Having trust in Humanity is important. Trusting your fellow humans is a virtue. Trust me.

Images

Creating images on my computer was a hobby of mine from 1995 to 1999.

In 1998 Rainbirds came in 61^st in a raytracing contest!

Fiction

“Tom’s Image Gallery” accommodates a cycle of plays and an html story. The plays contain images. Twelve gallery images are those in plays.

Visitors, be advised — as there is no sex in space (until someone puts it there), there is no cybersex in cyberspace (until someone puts it there). I estimate a performance of the plays would take between one hour and an hour and a half in playing time.

1998-1999: I wrote the plays, submitted with the images to publishers and agents the plays, and they were rejected.

Post-9/11: I thought of sending the plays for consideration with an “I told you so”. The idea was terrible, so I didn’t.

Iraq: None of my business.

2005: I sent two copies of a manuscript and the images to literary agents.

October 2005: An agent replied to an eBook of the plays, “I’m afraid I don’t feel sufficiently committed to offer representation.”

2007-2010: Minor editing.

2009: “We represent stage plays and writers for film and television, rather than online plays.”

Fiction links

Magicus Oculus (plays: In-Line Guide page) guide.php

Berliner (prose: html fiction) text000.php

oBook

The oBook oDition of Magicus Oculus (77 pages – full version) is an interactive eBook. Following links (clicking) constitutes interacting — “operating on instructions entered by somebody at a keyboard or other input device” (Encarta® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1999, 2000 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.) — with the ‘oBook’.

Magicus Oculus is interactive. Behold (click): Blind.

Themes

The theme of the raytracing contest was “Great Engineering Achievements”. Rainbirds was inspired by the first Gulf War (smart missiles homing in on their targets). The second Gulf War was somewhere over the horizon. (We just didn’t know it yet.)

A very salient theme is terrorism. Enter The Gentleman, about a gentleman who accepts responsibility for a foreign terrorist attack on American soil.

Alienation

The technique of hyperlinking to images in the plays is an example of the dramatic device the German playwright Brecht called Verfremdungseffekt. I didn’t mean for that to happen. In the html fiction Verfremdungseffekt (alienation effect) is stepped up a further notch. Berliner is fifty-three pages. Twenty pages are linked content. I did mean for that to happen.

Art

Interactive literature is as hard to find buyers for as cybersex in cyberspace (until someone puts it there).

TIG combines prose, drama and images (in eletronic form) as art. That isn’t to say, performing (and publishing) the play cycle is now superfluous. Art is never superfluous. (Call me an optimist.)

Browser Object

Fed up with browser wars? MSIE v Netscape, AOL LOL, MSIE v Firefox, MSIE v Opera? No more browser wars. Who needs a browser? Peace.

You can easily turn a Website into an HTA that works online or offline.

TIG probably has one of the most sophisticated HTA implementations anywhere — due in large part to a notable absence from the Internet of HTA, I HTA (hasten to add) humbly.

How does an HTA browser object work?

Instead of opening a Web page online in your browser, you open the page locally. The page displays within an application window. Not just any application window, that is: a HyperText Application (HTA) window.

If you’re interested in creating HTAs with browser navigation buttons, have a look at the script sections in the sample code or download the example (10 KB).

What are the requirements?

Starting TIG in an HTA window requires Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer 5.5. You can run the browser object in two ways. To test-drive my HTA (from this site), do this —

Cache Method: “Run” (or open — do not save, then run) index.hta. (Click on the link.) The browser caches index.hta before it launches. The file is 5.2 KB. Some browsers only permit you to save the file.

Save Method: Download htas.zip (6 KB). (Click on the link.) The ZIP archive contains three HTAs, a MIDI jukebox (1), an MP3 song (2) and TIG (3). The MIDI jukebox and the MP3 song are linked in TIG. You can open them as links. The HTAs launch application windows. Extract midiload.hta (1), tchaser.hta (2) and index.hta (3). Keep the files together, extracting them to the same place. Double-click index.hta to open TIG in HTA mode.

Why don’t more people have HTA sites?

HTA is unfashionable. The strength of HTA is that it is deployable — as an HTML interface, as a means of distributing offline pages. That does not endear it to many who mistrust the practice of deploying code. Malicious HTAs are coming to get you.

What can you do to protect yourself against naughty HTAs?

Don’t click on files with an .hta extension. Data Execution Prevention (DEP) on Vista might protect you by stopping legacy ActiveX controls from running inside HTAs.