
I've been thinking lately about what actually keeps me balanced, as opposed to activities that I *think* should. I don't want to fall into prescriptive thinking about wellness - meditation is good, exercise is good, social connection is good - without paying attention to what specifically works for a given temperament.

This is my attempt at a personal audit. The activities below aren't aspirational. They're what most consistently move the needle on my mood and general mental state. Some are obvious, others I eventually realized over long periods of time. The list is unordered, and non-exhaustive.

## Unstructured time

The main, overarching pattern for me. Probably the reason I'm freelance, the reason I became a father late-ish in life, and my hardest to manage, even though it's the most fruitful. I need open time that's unscheduled and unstructured to feel like my life is... mine. This counts for work as well as personal time. Any project that has an exploratory aspect throughout leaves me feeling way more balanced and energized, compared to something with a very strict process and timeline. After mulling over the draft for this paragraph for a few weeks, my general observation would actually be that I thrive with constraints but push back against structure.

## Time with family and friends

I will group these under the umbrella of: Social moments that reminds me I have good friends and I'm part of a robust support network. I'm rather introverted – I'm lucky to have a core of people close enough to me, and known enough to me, that we can get together without ostensibly draining my social battery.

## Playing music with people

I'm not much of a team sports person, but my way of, uh, communion if you will, is to play. Music is its own language outside of language, live and visceral, and I don't know of anything that feels like playing music with other people.

## Meditation

I have an on-and-off relationship with meditation, though it definitely has a positive influence on my mood. During the periods in my life when I'm consistent with sitting, I'm much less prone to feeling disorganized and anxious. However, I have a hard time working out the causation vs correlation here. Falling off the wagon is a sign I'm not doing so good anymore, but as of writing this, I'm not clear if it's the falling off, or the doing worse that comes first.

## Working out

To no one's surprise, exercise is good for you! I lean towards individual *action sports*, with my personal love being street trials. Think an almost-BMX, with lots of braking, balancing in place and climbing over stuff. I live in a northern country, so bicycle sports are out of the equation for almost half the year, during which I ideally do strength training 2-3x a week. Since I became a father, and personal time got very restricted, the gym outings are on hold and I go out for a run or bike ride when I can.

## Art and writing

I find it an irritating contradiction that I have such high get-to-work inertia, while at the same time work produced is one of my straightest paths to feeling fulfilled. Art gets me to that place without the hurdle of matching my output to someone else's expectations. It gives me a process that defaults to exploration, and a pleasant, tangible outcome for my time spent.

I think I like my definition of what constitutes art and creativity to be very open, and it feels natural to me to include writing here, even if it's fact-based and dry (hello to you, reader of this very article). Writing allows me a more direct way of self-reflection. It also lets me exorcise whatever might be sticking to my mind, unresolved or waiting to be integrated.

## Media & video games

### Coop games with friends

I never tried Fortnite, WoW or LoL, but video games have nonetheless been a reliable third space for portions of my social circle. I'm writing this on a day my friend and my brothers are planning to play together in the evening. The genres we pick are mostly shooters with a coop element, and driving games with a chaotic/open element – Wreckfest, [BeamNG](https://www.beamng.com/game/).

### Solo games

Games that ask some level of planning/organisation and methodical thinking are relaxing to me, especially if they're also open in some ways. I didn't dive into Factorio yet – early fatherhood and whatnot – but there's a broad category that includes Zachtronics games, multiplayer Minecraft (Tekkit!), some Civ-style games, city builders, etc. that fulfill my need for open exploration and tinkering. Some personal highlights, off the top of my mind:
- [Opus Magnum](https://www.zachtronics.com/opus-magnum/)
- [Mindustry](https://mindustrygame.github.io)
- [Dyson Sphere Program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_Sphere_Program)
- [OpenTTD](https://www.openttd.org)
- [Rimworld](https://rimworldgame.com)

### Fiction on screen and in writing

My dose of escapism comes from reading – I like sci-fi and fantasy, but I think I more generally love good prose that lets me visit other people's imagination. While I've been on a local authors kick (French Québécois) the last 12-18 months, one of my north stars in fiction is Ursula K. Le Guin's [A Wizard of Earthsea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Wizard_of_Earthsea). From the opening chapter:

> His father, the bronze-smith of the village, was a grim unspeaking man, and since Duny's six brothers were older than he by many years and went one by one from home to farm the land or sail the sea or work as smith in other towns of the Northward Vale, there was no one to bring the child up in tenderness. He grew wild, a thriving weed, a tall, quick boy, loud and proud and full of temper.

On screen, I'm currently enjoying what might become one of my favorite series, [Empathie](https://www.imdb.com/fr-ca/title/tt32827662/) by Florence Longpré.

I was raised in an emotion-shy family, especially male role models, and fiction seems to be what helps me most to experience the full spectrum of emotions.

## Patterns emerge

Going over the list, some themes seem to run across the spectrum of activities. Autonomy shows up everywhere – the need for unstructured time, creative work without external expectations, games that allow open exploration, sports that don't pit me against others, etc. Connection with others, in my case, gravitates around what I might call "quiet togetherness", with playing music together being its high-arousal equivalent. I clearly have a bone to pick with my relationship between structure and freedom, where I seem to need enough framework to feel grounded but start to fight that same structure the second I feel constrained.


A list of activities that keep me mentally balanced.

Things that influence my mental state


Digital tools that promise organization, like to-do managers and the like, tend to offer bottomless lists as the standard container.

In such a model, adding an item is easy (just type it out), while removing it is considerably harder (perform the action/task, then check it out). Overall, an easy, unbound list capacity shifts the burden of discipline from _doing what's needed_ to only _writing down what needs to be done_. [^1]

This is problematic, because any "primary" actionable list tends to lose its value as it becomes filled with secondary tasks that never make their way back up (hello to every client's Jira backlog). Once a list is filled with enough lower-priority tasks, it becomes a secondary list, and people tend to create another, different list, that captures the "true" primary tasks.

One moves to a new to-do app, creates a new email address or adopts that new, finally right, Notion template that's going to change everything. Except that the main feature is probably that it's an empty list – an absence of baggage.

The way I address this, personally, is that my short- and mid-term planning happens on paper, in what looks like a bullet journal if you squint a bit. Paper has two desirable characteristics this way:

- There's a finite amount of space to write things for a given time (in a day, in a week)
- Items that stick around week after week have to be manually transferred every time. If they fall in relevance, they eventually disappear.

This particular choice of tool is clearly an answer to my own strengths and shortcomings. I prefer tidy andfocused action lists, I don't mind the paper journal tedium, I'm great at holding a vision/direction but very poor at specific long-term planning.[^2]

[^1]: To be clear, many of these tools recognize the issue and adjust the format to guard against it. Kanban is the easy example, since it encourages a limited number of items in specific columns. However, here I'm speaking more of the fact that the _To-do_ column remains bottomless.
[^2]: This short text – nerding out on a very specific combination of tools, behaviors and self-awareness – is hard to do in person, and it's great that one can throw such a thing on the web and receive a few emails from other people who are able to relate.


Pulled from my modest digital garden: A short meditation on project and to-do apps featuring bottomless lists

A bottomless list is not a practical form of organization


[Design is the rendering of intent](https://articles.centercentre.com/design_rendering_intent/ "Design is the rendering of intent") – Jared Spool

It's hard to deliver sustainably good design in the presence of leadership that shifts focus (changing it too fast or out of sync with their org's execution capacity). Design's fuels are intent and domain information.

Startups famously _pivot_, but other structures similarly deal in shifting incentives and priorities. In that context, the best results I can offer come from my own ability to render quickly, and whether I can spec out solutions that are also fast and straightforward to produce.

But also – it speaks to a core issue in an organization. Companies with unfocused leadership generally end up firing their CEOs or burn down trying. Or, with tremendous amounts of money available, some of them successfully structure around making the CEO as useless and inconsequential as possible.

All this to say that design without leadership alignment (or without being a designer in a position of leadership) always feel like it maxes out somewhere around 50% efficacy.


A short reflection on design in the absence of strong leadership.

Weathervane Leadership


These are my (personal, anecdotal) notes on taking Ashwagandha as a supplement for two months. I’ve tried it because it reportedly helps lower anxiety, which has become a real issue for me in the last couple of years. I’ve updated the article after stopping at the end of the second month.

## Dosage, brand and frequency

From what was locally available at the time, I picked capsules containing 600mg of KSM-66, which is Ashwagandha’s most studied (and hopefully standardized) extract. I took one capsule daily in the morning, with food.

In retrospect, I would have liked something I can divide or otherwise portion, as 600mg is at least twice the low/minimal daily dose I want to try out.

Note that it’s the only supplement I’m taking, I have no medication I use, and I drink little to no caffeine, meaning I didn’t need to consider drugs it could interact with. For someone on existing medications, the process to consider taking Ashwagandha might be a bit more involved. 

## Sidebar: What’s Aswhagandha?

If you’re already familiar you can skip ahead. It’s a nightshade plant (Solanaceae), close to ginseng, from which the roots are dried and powdered. Its name means "horse smell", which is apparently an apt description of the raw product. It’s also called Indian Ginseng. It has a long history of use in Indian (Ayurvedic) medicine. It now gained a decent level of interest as a modern supplement for different effects it can have – mainly on anxiety, but also on recovery in athletes.

## First days

On the very first day, I had a moment of noticeably racing heart a few hours after taking my first dose. I attribute it partly to the initial dosage I couldn’t progressively introduce, and partly to the existing anxiety I had at this time.

At the end of the first week, I forgot to take a capsule in the morning, then I suspect I did forgot again the next day. This coincided with two days of higher anxiety (back to never being far from a panic attack). Again, since it happened very early in the month, it’s hard to distinguish between the effects/presence of anxiety itself, and what the extract might have influenced.

## Positive observations

Ashwagandha did make a noticeable difference. In short, before that month, it had become extremely rare for me to come back down to an actual calm state. Anxiety tended to "stick" to me, and I had adapted to a high arousal, low energy state as my new baseline (stressed and sleepy – it sucks). All my emotions felt prefixed with " stressed and X", and it was very rare for me to simply feel present and in the moment.

Between the second and third week into the month, I found I had regained access to an actual calm state. My baseline was back to an enthusiastic calm, and the spectrum of emotions that were available to me opened back up.

In a practical sense, I was again able to act mindfully during the day. Anxiety is a thief of focus, and it drains me of both energy and attention when it’s as high as it was previously. I could feel (hear?) some of my usual mental loops and triggers happening throughout the day, but now they usually failed to take hold, and fizzled out instead.

In my case, the most gainful change was that the physical manifestations of my anxiety shot way down. I suspect that the strongest loop I get stuck on is the concern of how anxiety itself can disable me in a moment with physical effects. Unfortunately, it’s tied to interoception (sensing one’s internal physical state). The physical manifestations of my anxiety crank up every time I notice that ... they crank up, which is a bad feedback loop in which to get stuck. Once Aswhagandha’s effect had settled, I would say the physical component dropped to maybe a tenth of what it was. I would recognize the sensations, but they didn’t raise to an intense level. This completely disarmed the physical-mental feedback loop, and afforded me the opportunity to come down to a calm state after most stressful moments during the month.

The second-order effects from the above changes is that I have more energy and patience in the day, and better sleep at night. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but significant enough to notice.

## Concerns

Low/no anxiety is generally also a lower arousal state, and I suspect I personally exist on a scale that moves from calm and unfocused to anxious and productive. At least, that’s how I live and react to the external motivators of our capitalist structure. Ashwagandha has _some_ effect lowering my arousal and focus.

Because anxiety itself robbed me of a lot of mental acuity in the last months, I don’t think the tradeoff of calm and potentially lower focus is a net negative in my case. I didn’t really have access to the calm state it compares to anymore. I think low-stress people taking Ashwagandha for other benefits might be at risk of slipping into disinterest or lose motivation as a side-effect.

From reading, I have another concern I’m entirely unsure I should address. A _lot_ of people talk about cycling on and off (for example, one month on, then one week without Aswhagandha) to prevent acclimatation. However, all of the cycling talk comes from the nootropics web communities, and that’s way out of my wheelhouse, partly because it’s people who are seeking lots of bleeding-edge products and are used to drawing conclusions from very limited data. Ashwagandha, in comparison, has a long history of use (a few millennia), part of which is daily use in a herbal tea for, like, your whole life. I still want more studies done to help guide how (and if) I use it, but at this point, I don’t want to put too much stock in the cycling advice so long as a low dose seems to preserve its effect over time.

Nonetheless, I’m finishing up this article on the end of a week off, as a way to notice the difference Ashwagandha was making. It’s helpful. I currently retain some of the mental flexibility that I seemed to regain while taking Ashwagandha daily.

## Conclusion

I keep thinking back to [a blog post Zach Holman wrote](https://zachholman.com/posts/the-depression-thing)in 2017 on depression, and specifically to the _✨ Drugs ✨_ part, where he discusses the apprehension and stigma related to drugs, but accurately points out that while some people lose themselves through the effect of a drug, we also use psychoactive substances to get access back to ourselves, as a supporter of the rest of the actions we take to heal.

My limited experience in that month points in a similar direction, and the next step for me is to see if Ashwagandha can give a boost to the other efforts I make, long-term, to restore access to my calm self.

### Update from a month and a half:

My observations remain roughly the same. I have forgotten a dose again one time, a Saturday, and that day went without a noticeable difference. The next day, I didn’t forget, but I did have much higher anxiety than usual, which resolved during the week. In the coming month I’ll be reducing to 300mg per day to see if I get the same benefits.

### Update after the second month

I used the momentum from lowering the dose to stop completely shortly after. As of writing this sentence (six months later), I haven’t resumed any supplementation, though I have had short periods of heightened anxiety. They track my exhaustion levels and didn’t seem to devolve into chronic anxiety – fingers crossed.


Observations after taking Ashwagandha as a supplement during two winter months.

Notes on two months of Ashwagandha


As a freelancer (and previously as an employee operating with relatively high autonomy), I communicate daily with clients on various things I need for my work to progress. One of these things is the very basic approval. *Here's a deliverable, please say yes or come back with needed revisions, have a good day.*

Almost every time, I make these approval emails a "default forward" situation. If the client doesn't do anything, I keep the project going. It's usually a simple matter:

> Hi Cassandra Client!\
> \
> Here are the wireframes that detail how users pick their organization type, and can configure it for themselves or the whole team.\
> \
> The next step for me is to turn these to high-fidelity mockups, and then deliver the styled components for development. I'm moving to mockups early next week, don't hesitate to share your notes by then as needed.\
> \
> Have a good day,\
> Louis-André

This has two effects: First, I don't get caught in approval limbo. Second, my client doesn't get caught (further?) in an email catchup race. 

I favor async communication and relaxed timelines. This fits async communication very well, and having reasonable delays with a default forward at the end helps *preserve the available slack* in said relaxed timeline.

Depending on the type of client you work with (specialists vs generalists vs out-of-industry) it also gives an out to people who prefer to give full autonomy to their providers. Some clients want/need to be very involved in the design process, but others will politely nod along each milestone review then tell you to please continue thank you. Default forward serves them as well.

I'll add one precision, which is that I draw the line at "forward as previously agreed". I won't send an email that defaults to an unexpected expense or a dramatic change to the project's direction. There are plenty of synchronous or interruptive ways to have *this* conversation.


How I write emails to keep my (silent) clients' projects moving

"Default forward": How I write to my clients to avoid getting stuck


This is a
short article about Territory B, the second series in my ongoing
explorations about different aspects of what "space" can mean.

# B?

The
series' predecessor, Territory A, delved into the idea of occupying
time as it moves forward. Territory B's focus is about maximalist use of
space – whether it ends up being efficient sharing or outsized greed.

It's inspired by societal artifacts like ad-laden web pages, British land division, disk space tools, and [wild posting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flyposting).

# Division, unity

Territory
B applies a sort of kitchen-sink approach to filling out a composition.
It subdivides a grid, then throws everything at it to get the space
filled out.

![Territory B - Out of band iteration](/journal/territory-b/oob.png)

The
underlying noise source, however, is unified and continuous. Just like
land division, the separations created in Territory B are ultimately
artificial. Its compositions usually let the viewer see *through*
the large blocks and feel the underlying field. Some elements describe
it through angles and alignment, others by crowding certain areas.

![Territory B - Out of band iteration](/journal/territory-b/oob-2.png)

# Exposed features

Six named features describe some of the main behaviors in each iteration:

**Palette name, and palette variant** expose the choice of colors in a composition, and whether it is reduced to a subset of its colors.

![Examples from each palette](/journal/territory-b/Palettes.png)

**Small blocks** means the composition will not allow larger subdivisions to exist inside its grid.

**No padding** crowds out the space by completely cutting off the possible spacing between each block.

![Example of a "no-padding" composition](</journal/territory-b/No padding.png>)

Squeeze cross axis will pick a main and secondary axis, then significantly increase the amount of possible rows or columns on the secondary one.

![Example of a "squeeze cross-axis" composition](</journal/territory-b/Squeeze cross-axis.png>)

**Color fill type** is usually Block,
meaning each block in the grid selects its color for its own fill
patterns. Some iterations make an exception to this and have the Precise value instead, where each individual segment drawn by the script picks its own color from the underlying noise source.

![Example of the "precise" fill type](</journal/territory-b/Fill type.png>)

# Block types

![Example of a pair of each block type](/journal/territory-b/Fills.png)

Territory
B has six global fill types that it applies to blocks in each
iteration. The underlying field influences the block choice, making
similar styles crowd together.

Three types are sub-grids that use
rectangles, circles and lines to fill out. These types sometimes react
to the field by picking element sizes or line angles based on its
strength.

Two types fill out with a focal point – one centering on
another rectangle inside the block, and the other drawing rays from the
focal point to the edges of the block. The offset of the focal point is
driven by the value field.

The sixth type is pointillism. The distribution of dots will often conform to and reveal the underlying field as well.

# Release

The collection was released [on fxhash](https://www.fxhash.xyz/generative/slug/territory-b "Territory B on fxhash") on Tuesday, March 7th, at noon on Atlantic time.


On Territory B, a long-form generative art series released on fxhash

Territory B leaves no space unused


A bit of context: **Maps for grief** is a generative art project, published on the [Art blocks](https://www.artblocks.io) platform. It explores the notion of togetherness without contact. If
you're interested, I published an introductory post about the series
before its launch: [Maps for grief](https://louis-andre.net/journal/maps-for-grief).

By
reading this post, non-technical people should understand the
mechanisms that draw a Maps for grief iteration, and someone technical
should have enough of an explanation to code their own take on the same
idea.

## How each iteration is drawn

The basic structure of
Maps for grief is the interaction of two noise fields. A noise field is a
map of random values across coordinates, with rules governing how its
values change across its area. In our case, each field is
two-dimensional, and filled with Simplex noise. This means that two
points close to each other will have very similar noise values, while
points further apart could be more different. You can picture a map of
rolling hills, with the lowest points having a value of `0`, and the highest ones, `1`.

![Visualization of the two fields in Maps for grief](/journal/maps-for-grief-breakdown/Fields.jpg)

Each
of the two fields has a specific role: The first one is turned into a
flow field – each value represents a certain angle. You've certainly
come across art based on flow fields in the past – like Tyler Hobbs' [Fidenza](https://tylerxhobbs.com/fidenza). In our case, the flow field is used to orient how each line moves in the space once it starts being drawn.

In
the rules I set for drawing lines in Maps for grief, each line has a
finite length that it attempts to draw without touching another shape.
Each composition tries to insert a total of ten thousand such lines at
random positions within its margins. The first ones always have the
space to be drawn, while the very last are usually all skipped, since
the space is already filled by previously drawn lines.

If we
simply drew based on the first flow field, then the artwork could look
pretty, but it wouldn't have much substance. Here's how the line work
would turn out (I left most other rules in, which is why the first one
is split in two regions):

![Demonstration: Lines only](</journal/maps-for-grief-breakdown/Lines only.png>)![Demonstration: Lines only](</journal/maps-for-grief-breakdown/Lines only 2.png>)

The
second noise field, as it grows in value, forces these lines to stop
drawing sooner, and at extreme values, prevents them from drawing
entirely. It's also responsible for turning "stopped" areas into symbols
instead, and it affects the colour selection across the composition. By
adding the second field's influence on drawn lines, we end up with
results like these:

![Demonstration: Lines and dots](</journal/maps-for-grief-breakdown/Secondary field.png>)![Demonstration: Lines and dots](</journal/maps-for-grief-breakdown/Secondary field 2.png>)

The last part is inserting symbols. The most on-the-nose part of *Maps for grief* is the drawing of these symbols, which appear in areas where lines
can't flow. These are the regions where the secondary field is the
strongest. Each iteration has a single type of *coping*, deciding
what type of symbol is drawn. There can be different drawing rules for
different symbols, which helps give each of the coping types a specific
personality.

Putting everything together, here's the sort of outputs we get:

![Maps for grief #231](/journal/maps-for-grief-breakdown/235000231.png)![Maps for grief #384](/journal/maps-for-grief-breakdown/235000384.png)

There are a ton of small pieces and details, but that's the gist of it. Let's analyze the main features involved.

## Main feature & rarity breakdown

### Coping

![](/journal/maps-for-grief-breakdown/Coping.jpg)

Coping is one of four values: **raw** (drops, or tears), **nature** (mountains), **mystical** (asterisks), and **spiritual** (crosses). Crosses and mountains can huddle very close together and
create areas that change in density, tears follow the flow of the field,
and stars vary how much branches they have in reaction to the secondary
field's value.

#### Rarities (coded / actual):

* Mystical 24.8% / **25.2%**
* Nature 24.8% / **22%**
* Raw 24.8% / **24.2%**
* Spiritual 24.8% / **26,4%**

### Palette

![](/journal/maps-for-grief-breakdown/Palettes.jpg)

There
are six palettes. Four of them are dark: **Nebula**, **Terminal**, **Winter
forest**, and **Witching Hour**. Two other are light: **IKEA Showroom** and
**Parched**. Note that any palette has a chance of being subsampled (this
is an unlisted feature). A piece with multiple regions can pick between
its full palette or any of its subsamplings when it starts drawing each
separate region.

#### Rarities (coded / actual):

* Terminal 16.6% / **15.4%**
* Nebula 16.6% / **15.6%**
* Winter forest 16.6% / **17%**
* Witching hour 16.6% / **18%**
* IKEA Showroom 16.6% / **16.8%**
* Parched 16.6% / **17.2%**

### Stroke length

![](/journal/maps-for-grief-breakdown/Lengths.jpg)

Lines
don't all have the same maximum length, and for each piece, this length
is set within a certain range. The range is picked at random on a
sliding scale, but for simplicity's sake, all pieces are classified
among three length groups. Short lines are capped under 1/12th the width
of the piece, long ones can go over 1/10th of the piece, average lines
are between the two.

#### Rarities (coded / actual):

* Short 32 % / **31.2%**
* Average 27.8% / **25.6%**
* Long 40% / **43.2%**

### Tip size

![](</journal/maps-for-grief-breakdown/Tip size.jpg>)

There
are four predetermined tip sizes. I see them as guidelines to the scale
of an iteration: Fine tip pieces are the best ones to present at a
large scale, while fat marker ones (my favorite size, personally) look
great even as thumbnails, but can lack in detail if they're too big.

#### Rarities (coded / actual):

* Fine 25 % / **25.8%**
* Average 37.5% / **38%**
* Thick 25% / **25.4%**
* Fat marker 12.5% / **10.8%**

### Region count

![](/journal/maps-for-grief-breakdown/Regions.jpg)

There
are four possible panel arrangement, with single-panel being the most
probable. An interesting interaction is that larger tip sizes can almost
entirely hide their center seams (which might still be revealed by a
change of subpalette), while smaller line width yields clean divisions
between each region.

#### Rarities (coded / actual):

* Single region 50 % / **52.8%**
* Two 25% / **24%**
* Three 20% / **18%**
* Four 5% / **5.2%**

## Special features

There are a few features that recognizably alter how a piece is drawn. These are features that are simply "on" or not.

### No dots

Usually, in a *Maps for grief* composition, some line insertions that should be symbols will draw a simple dot instead. Pieces with this attribute forego the dots, leading to sparser symbol areas.

Rarity: 2.5% / **2.8%**

![Maps for grief #39](/journal/maps-for-grief-breakdown/235000039.png)

### Persistent lines

I
said previously that each line's maximum length is picked on a sliding
scale. This scale is supposed to be affected by the strength of the
secondary field. Pieces with the **Persistent line** attribute have lines that are unaffected and attempt to run their full length no matter where they end.

Rarity: 5% / **4.6%**

\*\*\*\*![Maps for grief #499](/journal/maps-for-grief-breakdown/235000499.png)

### Radial

This is an attribute that adds an additional influence to the primary flow field. **Radial** outputs
have their lines aligned in relation to a center that pushes them in or
out. Combined with the usual forces of the field, it often yields a
spiral composition, though that's not the only possible output.

Rarity: 5% / **4.6%**

\*\*\*\*![Maps for grief #69](/journal/maps-for-grief-breakdown/235000069.png)

### Confused (special coping type)

Very
rarely, an iteration will not actually have a set coping type. The
distribution of coping types should be a flat 25% for each, but it's
lower than this because in a very small amount of iterations, the **confused** attribute
means the piece will pick a random symbol any time it has to draw one.
There are only ten pieces with this attribute in the whole collection,
which is still double the coded chance of them occuring.

Rarity: 0.8% / **2%**

\*\*\*\*![Maps for grief #485](/journal/maps-for-grief-breakdown/235000485.png)

## Invisible and minor features

There are other dimensions that are decided for each iteration, with varying levels of influence on its structure and aesthetic.

**Palette variants** exist
for each of the six palettes. The way it works is that each named
palette actually has two possible accent colours, and two possible
backgrounds, however each iteration picks only one of the accent and
background colours, along with a certain amount of intermediary colours.

**Drawing jitter** determines how "shaky" the line drawing is. This is set in relation to
tip size as well, so the outputs with the most jitter are ones with *Fat marker* tip size. You can get a feel for it by pressing a on the keyboard to animate an iteration in its live view.

**Line spacing** can vary a bit, and decides how much distance lines must have between each other.

**Radial field strength** affects compositions with the *Radial* feature. When very strong, it forces lines to point almost directly to
the center, while a low value will draw a soft spiraling composition.

**Force field scale** decides how much variance can be packed within the surface of an
iteration. Pieces with a small scale (think of it as being zoomed out)
tend to exhibit small "continents" of symbol areas separated by lines.
Larger-scale ones will rather show a single movement across their area.

**Flow field base angle** and angle range determine the main "axis" of the flow field, and how much lines can
veer away from it. Composition with very low angle range are almost
linear, while compositions with high angle range and sufficient force
field scale are the most turbulent.

## Variable values

Some variables are not exactly set by the seed, as they are adjusted by the generation process later on.

![](</journal/maps-for-grief-breakdown/Palette variants.jpg>)

**Anomaly threshold** (or *symbol threshold*)
is the value past which the secondary field forces lines to turn to
symbols. Because the output of the field always varies, the generation
process "scans" the field before committing to it. If it finds too
little variance, it will lower the anomaly threshold, so that a lesser
field strength can allow symbols to appear.

**Field offset**
also affects the secondary field. When the generation step finds too
little variance in the field, it also moves it around a bit – think of
it as moving a picture frame above a larger canvas, to see a different
part of it. This is done in conjunction with a light change in the
anomaly threshold.

**Palette/restricted palette** is a changing
list of available colors that the drawing script picks from. In
single-region outputs, it does not change, but in multiple regions, it
has a chance to change and pick a new subpalette (or go back to the full
palette) before each.

## Dive in!

If you want to try your
hand at picking out the expressed features of a given iteration, feel
free to browse the collection. It's possible to do so [on Artblocks](https://www.artblocks.io/project/235) where it was minted, on places like [Artacle](https://artacle.io/project/maps-for-grief), which will let you filter a collection like this using its different features, and on [Opensea](https://opensea.io/collection/maps-for-grief-by-louis-andre-labadie), which is more of a marketplace.

***

Oh,
still here? Okay – if you're interested, I've done three of my own
analyses to get you started. Enjoy, and thanks for reading!

![Maps for grief #443](/journal/maps-for-grief-breakdown/235000443.png)

That's iteration #443. Thick line width, long strokes, single region. Its crosses means it has **spiritual** coping. It has the intense magenta of the **Nebula** palette. And since it's only showing magenta, we can tell it's **subsampled**. Its long lines also extend into symbol zones, meaning it has the rare **persistent lines** feature.
We can also tell that the angle range is rather narrow, because the
darkest and the lightest parts of the composition are oriented within a
quarter-turn of each other.

![Maps for grief #430](/journal/maps-for-grief-breakdown/235000430.png)

Here's
iteration #430. It's a three-panel composition, and again uses the
**Nebula** palette. The first two panels seem to use the full range of the
palette with a magenta accent, while the third panel has a **subsampled**
palette based on the turquoise accent. With lines this narrow, the tip
size is probably **Fine**. This time, the noise scale seems rather
large, because there's a lot of variation across the whole piece.
Similarly, its angle range is quite high – the flow field is able to
turn back on itself, and it's hard to tell what the base angle might be.
In comparison, it was very easy to guess the average angle in #443. As a
consequence of its narrow line width, it will also have rather precise
drawing jitter, meaning its animation will be softer, up to pretty large
display sizes.

![Maps for grief #23](/journal/maps-for-grief-breakdown/235000023.png)

And here's #23! Again, a **three-region** composition, this time with **mystical** coping, as indicated by the stars. If I want to follow how strong the
secondary field is, I can look at how large the stars are, and how many
branches they have. The third panel also seems to have picked different
transition colours from the **IKEA showroom** palette the piece has. The
top-right corner lets us see that it's showing a light blue where the
rest of the composition would use the light purple/gray (lower left). It
also has the rare **radial** attribute, and its radial field
strength is very strong – we can hardly tell the influence of the
primary flow field over the drawn lines. It also has an off-center
radial pull, which only happens to half of radial compositions (that's
another untracked rare feature for you!).


Breaking down the behaviours, features and rarities in the series

Maps for grief: a breakdown


![Maps for grief – Ropsten output #12](/journal/maps-for-grief/Ropsten-12.png)

_Maps for grief_ is a generative art project, published on the [Art blocks](https://www.artblocks.io) platform. It explores the notion of togetherness without contact. As
with most series, I find it ties together many projects and techniques
I've done in the last two years. Let's look at a few of the building
blocks behind it.

It released on January 11th, 2022, and minted 500 pieces. You can see the project [on Artblocks here](https://www.artblocks.io/project/235). The above image is test mint #12 on the Ropsten network.

## Convergence

![Convergence - untitled #1](/journal/maps-for-grief/Convergence-untitled-1.png)

One of the first generators I've made and deeply liked is called _Convergence_. It uses a simple flow field to create undulating clusters of lines, then peppers them with small blooms of circles.

It's
the result of several explorations on flow fields and branching graphs.
Eventually, it became the foundation on which I created Maps for grief.

![Convergence #846593](/journal/maps-for-grief/Convergence-846593.png)

## Glitches

The
idea behind Convergence's blooms comes back in a lot of my
explorations, where I tend to establish a certain structure in the
piece, then add odd parts that are less conforming to it. Internally,
they're usually called glitches or anomalies.

Sometimes the anomalies themselves become the main subject for the piece, as is the case with Glitch circles.

![Glitch circles N° 8](/journal/maps-for-grief/Glitch-circles-8.png)

Other
times, they bring variety and interest into a structure that would be
too rigorous or monotonous on its own. The following was an exploration of purely using anomalies, turning a simple composition into something interesting by inserting "mistakes" in the drawing process:

![Glitched Circle](/journal/maps-for-grief/Glitched-circle-1.png)

Maps for grief rests
on the same technique of creating, then breaking, a given composition.
At its core, each iteration tries to draw lines that flow side by side
and never touch. However, these lines run into areas that dry them out,
and force them to shorten, sometimes turning into clusters of anomalies
when the secondary force is strong enough.

![Maps for grief – Ropsten output #22](/journal/maps-for-grief/Ropsten-22.png)

## Topography

Architecture
and natural structures are among the influences I can see repeatedly in
my work. While they can be seen as competing aesthetics, I find that
disciplines like urbanism and cartography have built a vast repertoire
of work that reconciles the two.

_Maps for grief_ leans
heavily on a more flowing, nature-like composition, yet it inherits a
lot (visually and technically) from explorations like _Urbanisms_ or _Boroughs_.

![Urbanisms - Selected iteration](/journal/maps-for-grief/Urbanisms-1.png)

![Boroughs - Selected iteration](/journal/maps-for-grief/Boroughs.png)

## Pen-like tracing

![Scratched circles](/journal/maps-for-grief/Scratched-circles.png)

Early
in my generative art explorations, I started building a plotter-like
library to trace lines in an organic way. It's nothing very fancy – it
follows basic lines and shapes, and sputters along the way, resembling
what pen ink would do on rough paper. You can find deeper explorations
on the topic over on [Sighack's Fifteen ways to draw a line](https://sighack.com/post/fifteen-ways-to-draw-a-line).
Over time, the rough line style became a recurring part of my practice,
and it's now uncommon for me to build sketches that don't feature this
kind of hand-drawn quality to the shapes.

_Maps for grief_
includes an agressively minimized version of the technique – at the data
level, each iteration is distilled down to a list of colored circles,
which are then traced on-screen to form the lines and shapes. The small
jitter is part of the drawing routine, which is why it's possible to
make the sketch gently animate without updating the data (press a on the keyboard when on the live viewer).

## Quick notes on the long-form format

![Screenshot of a review of test outputs](/journal/maps-for-grief/Outputs.png)

This is my second-ish foray into [long-form generative art](https://tylerxhobbs.com/essays/2021/the-rise-of-long-form-generative-art), a term coined by Tyler Hobbs to describe generative art that is created for direct distribution (the generator script is part of the art being delivered to viewers) and uncurated generation (the collector and the artist both discover what a specific iteration looks like at the moment it is sold and created).

The
benefits and constraints of this form have already been discussed and
laid out by others including Tyler, so I will simply talk about what I
resonated with while building Maps for grief.

### Subtle variations, less variability

The necessity for all long-form outputs to remain above a certain level of quality means that
there is less of a "conversation" between the artist and the possible
outputs at the end of the project. When manually curating runs, I can
tolerate a certain rate of "failed" outputs that are either
uninteresting or too chaotic and wild. With the tolerance afforded by
manual curation, I get to explore a wider range of these possible
outputs, including the interesting extremes, the good middle-ground.
While I can keep the interesting extremes, at the same time, I get to
discard the uninteresting extremes. With uncurated generation, all
variability has to be constrained into a "good middle" instead. Which
leads us into the second point:

### This work requires a different kind of critical view

I
found the project hard on my perceived critical sense as an artist.
When judging curated series, the quality of the series is defined by the
best iterations, which I pick out manually. Over time, this work
accumulates as a corpus of past series, each of which remains
represented by the best iterations I selected from it.

As I
explore and build on previous work, the level of quality I refer back to
is this running average of the "highs" from each project. Consciously
or not, I weigh each series against it.

With long-form art, the series' quality is suddenly defined by the average of all its iterations, and how remarkable the best iterations are, and how "uninteresting" the least interesting iterations are. It's been
difficult to recalibrate my perspective on output quality until I could
bring the variability and features to a good place across the board.

## Some example outputs

Here are a few iterations I shared from the Ropsten (test network) mints.

### #22

![Maps for grief – Ropsten output #22](/journal/maps-for-grief/Ropsten-22.png)

### #14

![Maps for grief – Ropsten output #14](/journal/maps-for-grief/Ropsten-14.png)

### #11

![Maps for grief – Ropsten output #11](/journal/maps-for-grief/Ropsten-11.png)

### #34

![Maps for grief – Ropsten output #34](/journal/maps-for-grief/Ropsten-34.png)

## Technical and rarity breakdown

See the technical breakdown [here, in my follow-up post](/journal/maps-for-grief-a-breakdown).


Maps for grief


As-tu déjà pensé ça, suite à l'éternel conseil de ne pas réutiliser un mot de passe:

> **Impossible** d'avoir un mot de passe différent pour chaque service où j'ai un compte. Je les oublierais tout le temps!

C'est vrai – je sais pas pour toi, mais j'ai bien trop de comptes pour me rappeler d'un nouveau mot de passe à chaque fois!

La solution par contre, ce n'est pas de réutiliser le même mot de passe à plusieurs endroits. Je répète en plus gros pour être dramatique et parce que je t'aime:

**Ne réutilise jamais de mot de passe entre tes comptes.**

*Si ça t'intéresse, j'explique pourquoi c'est dangereux à la fin de cet article ↓*

# Okay le smatt, comment je me protège sans que ça soit fatiguant?

**Avec un gestionnaire de mots de passe**! Grosso modo, c'est un outil qui mémorise tes informations de connexion pour tous les services que tu utilises.

On choisit un gestionnaire de mots de passe parce que son stockage, lui, est *très* sécurisé. Pas mal plus qu'un post-it sur ton écran ou un fichier texte sur ton ordi dans le dossier *Bureau/Dissertations/Aristophane, la bibliographie complète*

L'ensemble de tes mots de passe va être contenu dans le stockage du gestionnaire qui, lui, est encrypté par un mot de passe principal (*master password*).

**Tu te connectes à ton compte de banque?** Clique sur ton gestionnaire, entre ton mot de passe principal, et le gestionnaire fait le reste.

**Tu te connectes à un service du gouvernement?** Clique sur ton gestionnaire, entre ton mot de passe principal, badaboum.

**Tu te connectes à Skype sur ta nouvelle tablette?** Gestionnaire, mot de passe, voilà.

**Ton compte pour faire une commande d'épicerie?** Gestionnaire, bim bam.

Tu comprends le principe.

Bref, le mot de passe maître, ça devient le *seul* mot de passe que tu dois mémoriser. C'est pas mal plus pratique.

En plus, pas besoin que ton mot de passe principal soit difficile à mémoriser. Quelque chose comme `Un bourdon marche seul au plafond` c'est beaucoup plus sécuritaire que `Y&gT81zl~ke#s@`, en vertu de sa longueur tout simplement. En plus, tu t'en souviens déjà.

## Donc je prends quoi?

Voici trois bons choix de gestionnaires de mots de passe. Les deux premiers sont disponibles gratuitement pour les particuliers. Il n'y a pas de choix risqué dans cette liste:

* [BitWarden](https://bitwarden.com/)
* [Lastpass](https://www.lastpass.com/fr/how-lastpass-works)
* [1Password](https://1password.com/fr/) (36 $/année)

Personnellement, j'ai utilisé 1Password pendant des années et c'est un excellent outil. J'utilise maintenant Bitwarden.

## Je devrais installer des trucs?

Je te recommande d'installer **l'extension pour ton navigateur**. Les gestionnaires de mots de passe offrent pas mal tous des extensions. En pratique, ça t'indique pour chaque site web si tu as déjà un compte, et ça te permet d'y entrer tes informations sans avoir à les taper manuellement au clavier.

Je te recommande aussi, pour le gestionnaire que tu as choisi, **d'installer l'application sur ton téléphone**. La plupart des gestionnaires de mots de passe resteront synchronisés entre les appareils d'un même compte.

### Des bonus

Les gestionnaires de mots de passe comprennent toujours aussi un **générateur de mot de passe**. Donc, quand on dit d'avoir un mot de passe unique pour chaque compte, tu n'as pas à l'inventer dans ta tête à chaque fois. Tu cliques simplement sur «générer». C'est bon pour les nouveaux comptes que tu crées, mais aussi pour mettre à jour les mots de passe que tu as présentement. À coup d'une mise à jour de temps en temps, tu vas avoir des mots de passe uniques partout, sans vraiment faire d'effort supplémentaire.

Souvent, un gestionnaire de mots de passe va aussi **te signaler si un service que tu utilises a été victime d'une fuite de données**. C'est gentil, ça te permet de proactivement changer le mot de passe à cet endroit.

## En résumé:

* Tu choisis un gestionnaire de mots de passe (c'est gratuit!)
* Tu te choisis un mot de passe principal, qui est long mais facile à retenir
* Tu installes le gestionnaire sur tes appareils préférés
* Tu t'assure d'avoir tout de suite des mots de passe uniques là où ça
  compte le plus (banque, courriel, Paypal, Skype, gouvernement,
  employeur, ce genre de places)
* Tu dors bien.

# Et si mon gestionnaire de mots de passe a une fuite, lui? Ou si je me fais voler mon ordinateur?

Bonne nouvelle! Ça va se passer comme quand une compagnie qui prend sa sécurité au sérieux est malgré tout victime d'un vol de données:

Les hackers prennent possession du genre de coffre-fort (ou se sauvent avec un ordi dans les mains, on sait jamais). Mais ses données sont *encryptées*, donc illisibles, parce que personne d'entre eux ne fournir le mot de passe qui est la *seule* façon de les déchiffrer.

Sans ce mot de passe, les hackers ont en main un grand fichier rempli de charabia inutile. Et toi, tu demeure en sécurité. ✨

***

# Pour les curieux: Pourquoi c'est pas sécuritaire de réutiliser un mot de passe?

En gros, c'est parce que ça prend un seul compte vulnérable pour que tous tes comptes le deviennent.

Pourquoi est-ce que ton compte Facebook serait à risque quand une fuite a eu lieu sur genre `bingopromotioncirculaire.com`? C'est que quand un service en ligne se fait voler une base de données mal protégée, la liste des informations de connexion de tout le monde se retrouve dans les mains de hackers.

Ces hackers ont des outils automatisés qui **attaquent tout le monde en même temps**. La liste contient des informations personnelles d'une tonne de gens – par exemple, ton courriel et un mot de passe que tu réutilises ailleurs. Ils ont des outils qui vont essayer, pour chaque personne dans la fuite, de se connecter avec les mêmes informations volées sur les services populaires – Netflix, Gmail, Paypal, Facebook, Amazon, Desjardins, etc.

Avec ça, ils vont voir qui réutilise son courriel et mot de passe ailleurs, et prendre contrôle des comptes où c'est le cas. Ça s'appelle une attaque de
bourrage (*[credential stuffing](https://owasp.org/www-community/attacks/Credential_stuffing)* en anglais).

Fais le test: Entre ton courriel sur l'outil [Have I Been Pwned](https://haveibeenpwned.com/) et regardes dans combien de fuites publiques il a été retrouvé à date. De mon côté, je suis prudent, mais mon email personnel a malgré tout
fini dans 23 fuites majeures (Adobe, bit.ly, Last.fm, Trillian, MySpace,
etc.) au moment d'écrire ces mots.

Quand tu as des mots de passe uniques pour
chaque place, lorsqu'un service est victime d'une fuite pour une
raison ou une autre, tous tes autres comptes demeurent à l'abri des attaques de bourrage. La clé, c'est de ne pas réutiliser la même combinaison de courriel et mot de passe. Et ça explique le gestionnaire, qui rend ça facile au lieu de quasi-impossible!


A quick help for switching to a password manager

Les maudits mots de passe uniques


**Here are the field notes from how my girlfriend and I modified her Cintiq 13HD to install it on an Ergotron's VESA 100mm mount.**

[Here's a short video of the result](https://imgur.com/uxG19u0)

Our method leaves the tablet itself untouched, and the stand remains functional *but only on its highest flap*.

There's a short video of the result at the end 👇

### Summary:

* Procure M4 nuts
* Sacrifice the two lower flaps of the mount
* Mark your VESA holes from the inside
* Punch/drill while resting on a solid, flat surface
* Check for screw clearance and mount

## 1. Find or buy M4 nuts

M4 is metric, but it should be easy to find. You'll probably need 8 (two per bolt). If you're in North America, look in your hardware store's *hard to find* section, or look for it in the fixtures/electrical department. Cabinet handles use metric, and you'll often find cutaway screws for different door depths. Other options include asking a mechanic (metric cars & motorcycles). M4 bolts are relatively thin, which is what's needed here.

## 2. Sacrifice the lower flaps of the mount

This is the only functional modification you'll need to do. Consider if you want to keep them, there are options for just creating a complete holder from an easel, for example.

You're fine with two less flaps? Good! After this, there are no dramatic removals.

![A worthy offering to the VESA gods](/journal/cintiq-vesa-mount/1-cut-tabs.jpg)

Fold each flap around 90°, and use a sharp blade to cut in the crease. The plastic is supple and will come off easily.

## 3. Mark your VESA holes' positions

Lay the stand flat, and put the mounting bracket on it (doing it from the inside is fine). Make sure it's well aligned and centered, then mark the center of each hole.

We kept the mounting bracket within reach, since it proved easier to mount the Cintiq's stand on it this way.

![Measure twice, mark with confidence](/journal/cintiq-vesa-mount/2-mark-holes.jpg)

## 4. Mark/punch, then drill.

I recommend first punching your holes right in the center, which will allow a drill bit to stay centered. The stand's backplate is metal and slippery.

*Rest the stand on a flat, solid surface*. A piece of wood is perfect. The metal will bend around your punch if it isn't solidly backed (it did for me).

You can use a small Philips screwdriver, or a point tip if you have one. Center your punch as best as you can, then give it one sharp hit for each position.

Pick your drill bit. M4 screws need a 4mm (duh), or 3/16" hole. If you have it, 11/64" is closer. 5/32" is probably too tight. Hold the stand well in place. Use a bit that can handle metal, let it bite and turn slowly, the plate gives easily.

![No more sacrifices after that](/journal/cintiq-vesa-mount/3-drill-holes.jpg)

In a short time, you'll have four clean, well-aligned holes!

## 5. Check for clearance, then mount

Well, this is exciting! You can affix the plate to the VESA mount!

Check for your screws' clearance past the stand. In our case, we added one nut to the head of each screw, to make sure it didn't poke into the back of the Cintiq once everything is put together.

![Thumb screws are a really nice attention](/journal/cintiq-vesa-mount/place-stand-1.jpg)

![Clearance is much easier to get than FBI movies make it out to be](/journal/cintiq-vesa-mount/place-stand-2.jpg)

Put the stand on, so that its "hook" tab (the one around which the Cintiq rotates) faces *up*. The remaining flap will also point up.

In a diagonal pattern, mount the backplate to the VESA bracket. Make sure it's tight!

![The thin nuts mean no contact between your mounting hardware and the Cintiq itself](/journal/cintiq-vesa-mount/place-stand-3.jpg)

Then add the tablet! Seat it on the stand's hook, then be sure to "click" the bottom into place.

Boom!

### Pros

* The stand remains usable.
* More sightly than the easel trick
* Your 13HD is on a legit VESA mount!

### Cons

* The Cintiq 13HD is actually too light for many monitor arms (they'll continuously push the tablet up instead of keeping it in place). Be careful when you pick your arm!
* The stand is metal, but certain arms will resist hard enough for it to flex if you try to tilt the tablet up and down. This is very noticeable on the Ergotron here, which is made to hold hard enough for a 20lbs monitor to stay in place. We tilt it by holding close to the VESA bracket.


How to make the 13 inch Cintiq compatible with VESA mounts

A VESA mount for your Wacom Cintiq 13HD


**How does it feel to run your hands on the surface of something handmade?** Maybe it's a novel, a piece of furniture, a jewel – your eyes and your fingers tell you of irregular textures, of rigor and sensibility in the details.

I love the fascinated respect people have for the fruit of someone's craft. I love how one can afterwards still touch something, and feel the hands that made it. How we catch a glimpse of the human at the other end.

I like to think it's what we're trying to figure out with the web, and with things like mobile devices and the whole "app" construct.

We have touchscreens and cool interactions, but everything feels like it's behind glass (and well, physically, it is!). We try to make things better, and we often over-structure what we display into computerish coldness. Or, for want of skills and sensible priorities, we end up reaching said coldness before we breathe in some natural structure and humanity.

But I see (and hope) that we're getting there. It's in the way [Basecamp](http://www.basecamp.com/ "Basecamp")'s website is designed: with hand-drawn pictures and a wonky structure, that take nothing from the strength and clarity of their message, but rather infuse it with warmth.

It's in Justin Jackson's classic [This is a web page](https://justinjackson.ca/words.html "This is a web page").

It's in Frank Chimero's new website too, and in how it's summarized in [The Space Between You and Me](https://alwaysreadthemanual.com/read/issues/1/frank-chimero/article.html "The Space Between You and Me"), which he wrote for The Manual:

> The web is people all the way down.

The more we try to define and use processes that hide this reality, the less genuine it all feels. Hopefully, we'll grow a bit tired of thinking a "handcrafted" web means every pixel in a very rigorous place. Handcrafting is making something for the hands of others, and putting it out in the world, for others to find, to examine, and to discover the traces we left of ourselves.


A bit of a love letter to wonkiness and the human touch

The hands of others


# Note: This entry dates back to 2014, and doesn't represent current practices.

### Getting started with high-density (HiDPI) screens, like Apple's Retina display?

Several design apps support half/dual resolution out of the box, but a lot of us still use Photoshop, either out of personal preference or to play well with other team members. One way or another, I assume you're pretty damn efficient with Photoshop already. When I'm not using Sketch, here's how I handle Retina mockups with grace.

## Open your preferences!

* `Cmd + K` on OS X
* `Ctrl + K` on Windows

Go to *Units & Rulers*. This is where most of the magic happens.

### 1. Under Units :

Set both rulers and type to *points*.

### 2. Under New document Preset Resolutions :

A standard screen is considered to have 72 DPI. A Retina screen is at 144 (double). You can set the screen resolution to 144 as a default if you so desire (I prefer this). Here's how it looks. You can disregard columns, I personally have no use for global column settings:

![](/journal/retina-photoshop/Unit-settings-1.png)

## New documents

Now we can start working with points as our coordinate system. That makes things pretty easy. Say you want to design for Android screens, from [sizes medium and up](http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html) in portrait mode. That means 320 x 470:

![](/journal/retina-photoshop/New-document-resolution.png)

If you're familiar with the developer side of these things, you're 
probably aware that dimensions and positioning in these environments 
don't work in pixels. They use points.

Here's the basic 
difference: iPhone screens, whether they're Retina or not, share the 
same coordinates system. They both "measure" 320 x 640 points, and that 
is how things are placed on screen. A full-screen image measures twice 
the amount in pixels, but remains 320 x 640 in points. These are the conditions we're reproducing.

## Changing your current PSD to Retina/HiDPI

This method 
shoud be a big help if you want to keep working in your existing PSDs, 
and simply bump their resolution 2x. I'm assuming you're designing 
mostly with text layers, smart objects and vectors. If you're not, 
you'll have a lot of extra work to restore 
everything that becomes blurry.

Open your document as usual. Once there, open Image → Image size... or hit the appropriate shortcut:

* Cmd + alt + i on OS X
* Ctrl + alt + i on Windows

Then, change your dimensions' units (they're probably on pixels) into points too. Make sure resampling is activated. Then (and only then!) bump the PSD's resolution to 144 pixels/inch.

![](/journal/retina-photoshop/Convert-settings.png)

Once this is done, hit "OK". Review your document. You should be all set!

:)

Note! While this setup means there is a pixel for every half-point, you'll want to use whole numbers
 for position and dimension in your designs. This is because screens 
that do not have double resolution still use one pixel per point, so 
half-points will really land on half-pixels: this means blurry results.

## Working with points

So what are the main differences?

### Type is actually in points.

If
 you've ever worked in print design, this change will make a lot of 
sense to you. For screen design, what it means is that you can use 
"real" sizes for your text, instead of Retina requiring double the 
actual size. 14pt text in your PSD will look like 14pt.

![](/journal/retina-photoshop/Actual-text-size-1.png)

### Rulers are in points.

In the picture above, you can 
also see the rulers don't match document pixels one to one. The ratio 
becomes 1:2, because this PSD has a 144 DPI resolution! The coordinates 
on the rulers are what will be used in development, and they reflect 
their "real life" perception. You can use points in your info palette, too! If you don't use this palette, take this occasion to try it out. Set up your preferred units in the palette's option dialog.

It'll give you color readouts, the dimensions of what you have 
selected, and the coordinates (in points, if you want!) of your cursor.

![](/journal/retina-photoshop/Info-palette.png)

## That's it!

It's
 far from being the only (or the most complete) guide out there, but 
these are the basics that make it easy to uncouple pixels and actual 
dimensions in Photoshop.

From there, for example, you can easily 
create a 300DPI document for print, or a 18DPI document for this awesome
 pixel-art game you're working on – all without losing your head around 
typography and unit conversion.


Notes on how to work with Photoshop when designing for Retina screens. A bit obsolete now.

Journal