From: polowin@chem.queensu.ca (Joel Polowin)
Subject: Re: I'm a Bo-oo-zo and I'm okay..
Organization: Dept. of Chemistry, Queen's University
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 18:26:28 GMT

In article <BxK9H4.MqH@constellation.ecn.uoknor.edu> pmmuggli@midway.ecn.uoknor.edu  (pauline muggli) writes:

>however, the last "bozo alarm" referred to above, did
>irritate me.  i think you correctly pointed that out by the "do my
>work for me" statement.   it may have been the way you worded your
>request, but i did feel that you wanted us to do the work so that you
>could either profit from it or copy patterns already on the market
>without paying.

>my own bozo alarm is set off two ways:
>1.  people who want me to do the hard work for them so they can
>    make a profit.
>2.  people who look down on something because it is hand made.

I would not venture to disagree with either of your alarm triggers.  On
the other hand, I'd like you to take another look at my original posting
(repeated below), and see if you can really read it as asking someone to
do the work -- as opposed to asking if the work *has been done*.
 
>>Mary Otto is almost the stereotypical Pretentious Artist -- has to be done
>>HER way, anything else is an insult to the Artist.  I suppose she doesn't
>>own a camera (degrading to oil painters), musical reproduction equipment
>>(think of all the musicians who can't earn a living, because people would
>>rather stay home and listen to a CD!), or video stuff (pity the actors,
>>losing out to TV and movies on VCR).
> 
>ah, so i see you have your own "bozo" alarm where craftsmen are
>concerned.  saying this about mary (the generalizations) is what she did
>towards you.  tit for tat.  hope you feel better now.

Moderately.  Yes, I have my own "bozo" alarm -- for craftsmen, and anyone
else, who take themselves so seriously that they automatically insult
others who do not deliberately cause insult first.  I'm trying to remember
who it was -- Steven Brust, I think; he's a highly respected author of
fantasy fiction -- who commented something to the effect that "there are
artists, and there are Artists.  The former refer to what they do as 'my
stuff' or 'my shit'.  The latter talk about their 'Work'.  The former,
no capitals, are the ones to watch -- they're the ones who aren't satisfied
with what they're doing, and are trying to improve their work.  The
latter are pretentious idiots."  I may well be incorrect in my attribution.

>ps.  i truly hope that the flames die down, and we can get back to
>sewing.  i do read one other group that is as nice, we did have a rather
>viscious flame war (short lived), and we are now a nice group once
>again.  it may not have been forgotten, but it has been forgiven.

Agreed.  I'll shut up now -- until someone else gets called names for
making simple information request, or is accused of planning to cheat
others or other dishonesty without the name-caller having some basis for
such accusations or even having the decency to E-mail for clarification.

My original posting follows:

A friend and I were chatting recently and came up with a little problem
that I need a bit of help with: conversion of digitized images to
cross-stitch patterns.  Most of the steps seem fairly straightforward
even to me, a novice at image processing: reduce the image resolution
and the number of colours, re-map to a palette of embroidery floss
colours, output the result in standard pattern format with a cross-
referenced table of floss numbers.  I've accomplished all of the steps
except the last, which I expect to be a bit tedious but not difficult.

But although I can re-map to any palette that I've got, I don't have
colour information about the standard floss colours.  Worse, the local
craft shop tells me that different manufacturers of embroidery floss
don't have a consistent mutual set of colour codes, nor do they make
colour charts available except at a higher cost than I'm willing to
pay just yet.

Does anyone out there have information about standard floss colours,
preferably in some sort of RGB format?  Apparently, in addition to the
project that I started with, it would be a convenient thing if some 
sort of cross-referencing chart between flosses made by different
manufacturers was assembled, and if RGB-type information is available
from different manufacturers the creation of such a chart should be
fairly straightforward.

And, of course, if someone else has done this sort of thing long ago,
I'd like to hear about it.  I've been having fun learning about the
image processing, and expect to be learning a bit more about cross-
stitching before I'm through, but I have about a zillion other ways
of spending my copious free time than repeating someone else's work.

I'd appreciate E-mail to polowin@silicon.chem.queensu.ca, or
polowin@chem.queensu.ca.  Thanks very much.