Colors

This article was originally intended to describe some method i have figured out to find colors that match each other well, but i have rapidly found myself constrained to widen the subject in order to make things very clear for your convinience, explaining the why of the how of the what !
Thus the intorduction to the concept of colors is mandatory to fully comprehend the method i describe later, and so it's no time for you to begin your reading with a loosened focus !

Once upon a time, there was the Sun !
Basically made of Hydrogen and Helium, the sun's job is to ensure some chain reaction between those elements, that produces a massive amount of energy, which is expelled in the form of radiations. A radiation is mainly characterized by its frequency, so we have classified radiations by frequency ranges (called spectrums), and here i name the main ones :
Cosmic Rays, Gamma Rays, X-rays, Ultra Violet Rays, Light Rays, Infra Red Rays, Radio Rays.
You surely must have encountered some of those names somewhere, so i hope now you do have a little idea about what they are ;)

Please note that the sun is not the only source emitting radiations, your screen for instance is doing the same right now (with just light rays) ; i just found it more digestible to expalin with the sun rather than other things.

Now, it happens that the Light Rays represent the spectrum to which the human eyes are sensitive ; meaning that we can see that set of frequencies, our eyes are a peripheral for our brain, they serve as decoders of the light rays, converting them to electrical pulses that go to the brain, and he tells you : dude, that is blue ! (surely, after he has been taught when he was young that that thing is called blue !)

We have finally arrived to the colors haven't we ! ;)
Don't be too joyous we haven't yet finished with the rays :P

If colors are light rays, then what is the difference between blue, green, purpule and the others ?
Well, it is the same as earlier when we have classified the rays ; if we divide the light rays spectrum on its turn to smaller frequency ranges, we find in order : violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red.
Did you notice those are the rainbow colors ? :) (don't ask me why cuz that's not as easy to explain as it's been so far :P)
One more thing, if you remember your childhood painting lessons: when blue and yellow make green, you'll notice that in the list i've written above, green is between blue and yellow ! ...
(Yes i know, they should've explained that to us eariler !!...)

Now let's summerize ; a color is a radiation of a certain frequency.
Yes, but so far i haven't mentionned the black and white ! so what about them ?
In fact, black and white aren't colors, they are light values.
In other words, they are indications to whether there is light or not.
Confusing huh ?
Ok don't worry, i'll make it clear :
Let's consider this following frequency : 440 THz, it's the red. If a source only emits that frequency, then we see red, but if the source also emits another frequency with that one, then we see the mixture of the two colors (like when you mix watercolors), and if the source emits all the colors' frequencies, then we don't see "any color" : it is the white ! Now if the source doesn't emit anything, there is no frequencies at all, nothing : that is the black !
Grey (which is not a color but a light value also) represents somewhat the middle : the source does emit all the frequencies but that's neither enough powerful to be white nor totally null to be black; kind of middle.
Now just one thing before you assume you've understood everything : in painting, when you mix all the colors you got, you don't get white, but black !
Didn't i say white is the mixture of all colors ?!
...
Muahaha ! confused, right ? xD
Okay let me explain ^^
Colors are frequencies, but painting is not, it is matter : pigments, thus is does not emit rays, but absorbs them (like all the matter around us), and that makes all the difference ; when the matter ( a car for example) absorbs all the light, there is nothing left to see : you see a black car, but if it does not absorb anything, it reflects (bounces back) all the light, : a white car ! and if it absorbs everything except the 440 THz frequency, that frequency is reflected and goes back to your eyes and you see a red car ! =)
(Grey here means the car absords only a little of ALL the frequencies, and reflects back the rest)

Now if you clearly understood the whole of that, you are almost ready for the method to find matching colors ! ;)
In order to obtain a certain color, we mix some colors together, and it happens people found out that with the follwing magical three : red, green and blue, we can make any color we want !
Wait wait wait ! are you talking about primary colors ? because i know those are red YELLOW and blue, not red GREEN and blue !
Yeah yeah i know ^^ but you are talking about painting colors, and i'm talking about frequencies ;)

So ! Have you often encountered these initials : RGB ? that is RedGreenBlue =)
You can adjust the values of those three in your TV or computer screen or whatever, to get the right color balance in your picture !
So, in order to get a certain color, each of these three has to get a value, this value might go from 0 to 10 for example, or from 0 to 1000, and you can expect that the bigger the range is, the greater amount of colors we can get ; we talk here of the color resolution.
Right click on your desktop and go to Properties, then to the settings Tab, there you find "Color Quality" usually set to 32 bit, that represents the color resolution, and 32bit means that the values range from 0 to 4 294 967 295 !
In computer language we use a different system of numbering than the one we use in our everyday life.
Ours is the "decimal" system, from the latin "decimus" which means "tenth", based on ten numbers, and here i remind how it works :
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14...
note the sequence is to put all the numbers in order until the last (9) and then we add a digit on the left and we start counting again the numbers on the right
Computers work with the "binary" system, from the latin "bini" meaning "two together", so there are only 0 and 1, and here is how it goes :
0 1 10 11 100 101 110 111 1000 1001 ...
Computers also use a "more convinient" numbering system which is the hexadecimal (hex is Greek and means six), hexa-decimal means 16 basic numbers, and here it is :
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 1A 1B 1C 1D 1E 1F 20 ...
Please don't get too much confused, it's actually quite simple, you just have to keep looking at those numbers for a while until you get it ;)

Now you are finally ready for the secret method xD
Open the very simple painting program "Paint" ("Start>All Programs>Accessories>Paint") (or any other similar program if you have)
On the menu bar, go to "Colors > Edit Colors" and click on "Define Custom Colors", on the bottom right, you have Red, Green and Blue, each one with his value, and that is the key !
(You find also Hue, Saturation and Luminosity, they represent another way to compose colors, but for now we'll do with RGB so that you get the idea and later you can find your way)
Try to set some random values to the RGB and you'll see it gives you different colors...
The values in Paint range from 0 to 255 and it uses the decimal system, in other software you will most commonly encounter the hexadecimal system, with values ranging from 0 to FF (wich is equivalent to the same : 0-255 in decimal).
If you see 05FF7A that means 05 of Red, FF of Green and 7A of Blue, they are always in that order : RGB, and always 6 digits, 2 for each color : RRGGBB.

Now comes the art !
The method i'm going to describe is based on the assumption : two or more things that go well with each other have a certain logical relationship that links them, and i'm proving it right now :
Still in paint, pick any random value between 0 and 255 (230 comes to my mind) put it in the three fields RGB.
Apart from 0 and 255, whatever value you choose, you'll always get a shade of grey, and i'm not a magician to know that :P :
Remember that we said earlier that grey represents the "not too powerful neither null" presence of all the colors, here the "power" stands for the value between 0 and 255, and when you put the same it means all the colors are present with the same power, but not null to be black nor fully powerful to be white.
Now pick another random value, that'll be 200 for me, and choose a simple mathematical operation, addition or substraction, that'll be substration for me.
I do the following : 230 - 200 = 30.
I cared to choose an operation whose result will still be included in the 0-255 range ;)
I put 30 in one of the RGB, in R for example, and i now have Red = 30, Green = 230, Blue = 230. That is color X.
Now, i redo the same but with G : Red = 230, Green = 30, Blue = 230. That is color Y.
You have guessed, i finish with B : Red = 230, Green = 230, Blue = 30. That is color Z.
I put these three colors side by side (in a simple drawing) : wow ! they go so well with each other ! xP
Please note that i didn't say they are great colors ! because that depends on your taste, but i did say they go with each other, meaning hey are harmonious together, independently from their "look".

Well, with this method you have a lot of possibilities, but just two or three colors (X, Y, Z), but you do have the idea, so you can practise with millions of combinations and operations, just make it that there is a logical relationship between the three values.
Maybe you are a little skeptical about this ? In this case, pick any picture you know in which you find that colors do really match each other, and for each color in that picture, get its RGB values (pick the colors with the color picker tool in your software, and go edit the color so that you get the values), write them down, look at them together, and you'll see there is a mathematical relationship between those values !
I could've put some illustrated examples here, but with my studies i barely found time to write down this article, so as soon as i'll be free i'll update this ;)

The idea in this article, behind aiming to explain some basic color concepts, has been to roughly show, that in a generally, taste is not such a subjective concept when it comes to find things that fit each other, everything in this universe is somehow linked to everything else, and there is an explanation to all of those links, but we don't always know or undestand a lot of them, which leads us to getting mistaken in dealing with so many things...

Know your world better, to live better.

Folks ! How do you feel after having read this article and how do you find it ?
I'll be reading your comments with an immense pleasure ^^

The Generation Gap, Explained

Before getting started

How does each one of us reach his personal level of information, of intellect and intelligence ?
It is very difficult to answer this question without tackling with the definition of intelligence, thus as far as this subject has only for purpose the explanation of the gap existing between generations, we will consider a set of assumptions (and i will hopefully soon write about these assumptions in a more detailed way) :
- Intelligence is the set of experiences in one's life, and it is to a certain point, connected with the amount of knowledge that one holds.
- An important aspect of intelligence is wisdom
- The human being is egocentric.
Whether you are approving or not of these assumptions, you will understand their utility a bit further so just be patient ;)

Once upon a time...

Now we're ready to get into our subject ;)
Your parents have brought you to life, supposedly you are born "blank", but in reality you do have two givens : the human instincts, and your parents' DNA. During their life, your parents have gone through a lot of experiences, learned many things, and that build their personality. Based on that personality, they are going to grow you. Not to forget that one's childhood is one crucial part that determines his character : you will be based on all the principles and behaviours that your parents teach you in your very childhood, those things, they have spent all their lives setting them up. To cut it short and clear, you are acquiring the essence of their life learnings.

The non-vicious circle

Later when you are grown up, you start to build your own character based on your own experiences and you collect the information that consolidates your mind, which brings you to end up with your own personality.
You make children, and the same pattern keeps going on and on ...
Noticed this is a continuity didn't you ? Yes it is.
Continuity ? but, are we turning in a vicious circle ?
Not the least of the world ! Going back few lines up, you will notice that personality is based on the childhood, which means the parents, and the parents did not come out of nowhere ! They have their own parents, and so on. Meaning, that your personality, is somehow, the sum of all those of your ancestors, going back to Adam ; We are talking about the social evolution !
Now let's clash something ; how about facing your tenth ancestor and comparing your personality with his ? That would be one hell of a difference wouldn't it ! You are far more "developed" that him, because you are already him, plus, a dozen of essences of personalities of those who followed him.
When we state the word personality, we sure have to think about all its facets, mainly including intelligence, reactivity, and principles.
I'm sure you now do begin to understand where i am coming to.
In our life we generally only ineract with four generations : our grandparents and parents, our children and grandchildren. That surely shrinks the difference between the clashing personalities we talked about, but it still does exist !
What do we end up with ? In a very rough way i would say : being more intelligent than our parents, and less intelligent than our children.
And that, is the gap between generations.
There will surely be some, if not many, varaiations to this general rule, and that is due to the differences between the cultures and environments and so forth... Or more scientifically, that is due to each one's own genetic path that goes up back to Adam.

Yes but, clearly ?

If you do have problems with your parents, or your children, now you know why they can't understand you, and you shouldn't be expecting them to understand because you are not living the same generation ; either you are an new form of them, and they can't evolve to understand you, or you are an old form of them, and you can't evolve to understand them.
Same thing with all the people around you ; kids, students, workers, seniors...

Still...

Now let's try to see things from a different side, this time in favour of the old ones ! it's true that so far i haven't really been on their side, treating them with less intelligent people !
If we consider one's lifetime, youth will always be at the back, and living more implies knowing more, more experience, thus more wisdom (and this word contains a lot of things, so it's okay if i don't develop i know you see the extents).
We have from one side, the youth, subtile, reactive, but lacking wisdom, and the old, relatively slow, but wise.
That makes the second face of the generation gap.

Someone young will never understand why the old one keeps saying "oldish things", he will have a rebelling attitude against the decisions imposed to him, he is surely keen, but he lacks that experience that allows him to make valuable judgements.
The old one from his side, abuses of his power position, he will always have in mind that he is more experimented and apt to judge and take decisions, and that the young doesn't know anything.

So ?

You, that are reading now, whether you are young or old, are the others functionning at a very slow rate, or too fast for you ?
Are they too much open minded or not permessive at all ?
So what is the solution ?
Solution ? why ! is there a problem ? that is not a problem, that is just how things are, so unless you want to bend time and space, you have to cope with that fact ;)
The idea is that, when you know how things work, you know how to deal with them, but when you don't, you just keep fussing around and commit mistakes.
So now that you know how this generation stuff works, just don't blame a different generation for being different from yours :P and just try to get the best out of it ;)

P.S : if you still remember the two assumptions i've done above and are waiting for the explanation, it means you missed it xD so you can either read again or just forget it :P

I'm Blogging !

Today coincides with three days less than two thousand and eight years after Jesus Christ was born, and with six days less than one thousand and four hundred thirty years after Muhammad's emigration from Mecca to Medina ; i'm starting my web blog !

What among all the thoughts, ideas, concepts, opinions, theories, intentions, impressions and suppositions that travel my mind am i going to elect for writing in this blog ?

Why am i making this blog ?

Who will read it ? and what effect will it have on them ? What effect will it have on me !

You and i, dear reader, will get these questions answered by the way we read ;)

So let me wish us a happy blogging ^^

p.s: here is the (less up to date) french version of this blog : http://sabretranchant.blogspot.com.