Document Growth by Stu
November 6th, 2007 1:59 PMI combined this with Object Annotation, which I have now posted as well. I decided, while in class, to annotate an object on the campus of the university I attend. I would write a note describing my feelings about this object (a metal snowman) and document the growth of the note.
Because I'm a bit of a dork, I wrote the note in LaTeX. Here's the first bit, before I even wrote any note:
Then I started to write my note to the snowman:
And I kept writing:
And writing:
And writing:
And then I compiled it for the first time:
Then I had the finished digital product:
And I printed it out and stuck it to the snowman.
The document grew, and I documented its growth.
Basic LaTeX for my note
\usepackage{setspace} is in there because I originally was going to do something different with this. I never actually set any spacing.
I wrote a paragraph.
Not my best writing, but the point was to write a note, not an essay.
More writing.
Like I said, not terribly interesting.
Even more words.
I think it might be truncating the pictures.
More words.
Now with pdf and compiler log!
Almost done.
Done. Time to print.
The whole thing printed out.
It grew!
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Is this really the first time someone thought of doing this task in this way?
I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't. I didn't read through most of the others before doing mine.
I might have, uhh, appropriated your task into my own...
Welcome to the game.
How'd you find your way to SF0? (The sudden CMU influx is great, but a bit surprising. You do all know each other, yes?)
Regarding turning document into a noun, it's certainly been done for some of the other "document" tasks. (Most notably in Ink Tea's Ink Tea.) But, this is a fun completion none the less.
Thank you! It's quite a bit of fun.
A friend of mine in DC (former CMUer) posted to a list a lot of us CMUers are on. So a whole bunch of us joined.
Thanks for pointing me to the Ink Tea. I was thinking about turning food into a document and then dissolving it somehow. Maybe I still will. I was thinking of using pomegranate. But neat to see other ideas and know how to avoid copying them if I want to.
Oh, and I love meeting TeXies. Rock on with the TeXing.
I was thinking about doing this as literal, kind of. As... more physical document growth. Like, you have a printer, and the document gets printed out and its a page. and then ten, then 15, til you have just an enourmous stack of paper. but then i decided that was really evil, because it would waste a lot of trees. and I like trees. and they wouldn't like me if I was mean to them. so I am working on some other way to do that.
Caroline: I was thinking of doing that for Document Reproduction, actually, and came to a similar conclusion. This reminds me of a favorite Jack Handey deep thought:
"If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time for no good reason."
I saw it yesterday! It touched my special place!