Oh wow, it's been a decade! I remember this, and was excited to see these released. Nice work!
This actually inspired me to go out and start (slowly) cataloging mostly historic 100+ yr old landscapes that were locked behind mostly non-US pay-to-access (cough British museums cough), and write a flurry of emails to institutions encouraging uploading high res versions. I'm contemplating a project to put historic paintings "on the map", depicting their geographically represented locations (when applicable), giving a window into the past. Maybe I should circle back on this effort to get more paintings released...
CodeLikeHell 80 days ago [-]
I would absolutely love to see that project come to fruition.
3dsnano 80 days ago [-]
DO IT
thisisparker 81 days ago [-]
Blog post author here! Always happy to see people looking at and reading about these paintings. Happy to answer any questions or job offers people here may have!
3dsnano 80 days ago [-]
thanks for taking the time to care about something that others may find pointless and pursue it to a point where it becomes something new and important. i want to let you know that i find myself inspired!!!
schoen 80 days ago [-]
Hey Parker, congratulations on your NYT daily crossword publications! I solve the Daily every day and have been impressed to see your work there a number of times now.
parkerhiggins 80 days ago [-]
incredible, impactful, and authentic read!
thisisparker 80 days ago [-]
lol thank you other Parker Higgins, always a pleasure to run into you here
ksherlock 81 days ago [-]
Thanks for your work. I used one of the pomo pictures in a project a few years back.
biker142541 81 days ago [-]
Echoing the same thanks! I have used as well personally as technique references and in several projects directly.
You can have fun with 'em since they're public domain (:
Note 1: The metadata, such as title, author, etc. seem to be missing. If anyone knows of a collection with all that included, let me know (it's not in the EXIF either, I spot-checked).
Use of the images in the U.S. Department of Agriculture Pomological
Watercolor Collection is not restricted, but a statement of attribution is
required. Please use the following attribution statement: "U.S. Department
of Agriculture Pomological Watercolor Collection. Rare and Special
Collections, National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, MD 20705"
msla 80 days ago [-]
I wonder how the USDA can demand anything regarding images created well before the copyright cutoff of 1929. I strongly suspect that's boilerplate text with no actual force.
biker142541 80 days ago [-]
Oh definitely no force behind it, but just annoying to see. These kinds of issues don't exactly block usage, but can plant a lot of confusion or hesitation for potential users.
I wish agencies proactively embraced "please go use this awesome stuff" mentality vs gatekeeping by default.
biker142541 81 days ago [-]
I'm also noticing there is no explicit license on the official page. If it's public domain, attribution is not required. If it is not public domain, they should clarify the license (pretty sure this is indeed public domain).
Ambiguity like this is way too common...
interroboink 80 days ago [-]
Yeah, agreed it's weird.
For another data point, this catalog.data.gov site[1] lists the license as "us-pd" (ie public domain in the USA). But then yeah, like you said the attribution demand is invalid.
Became friends with Parker during my time at the Recurse Center. He's even more obsessed (in a good way) and funny in person! Glad to see his post on the top of HN.
fsckboy 80 days ago [-]
you know how "m" can look like an "rn" ligature? I swore I was going to be looking at a more acamdemic style of watercolor art in the field of pornology...
> " This was my first ever project in Python, and in many ways, the start of my life as a programmer. The domino effect here is a little mind-boggling for me."
I can certainly relate to this. I started scripting for very obtuse reasons, and quickly started seeing things everywhere which I could apply a little code to and improve my life.
snug 80 days ago [-]
I was scrolling the page looking for links so I could see them all, until i realized the links were just slightly in bold, rather than a different color and underlined. Would be good to highlight the links a little more on your site.
Awesome work either way!
thisisparker 80 days ago [-]
good shout, I think some recent typography changes made the bolding more subtle on mobile. I've pushed an update underlining them and it should be live momentarily!
snug 80 days ago [-]
Ahh yes, much better
__mharrison__ 80 days ago [-]
I think I'm going to print a few of these for my office. Thanks thisisparker
aghastnj 79 days ago [-]
I had never encountered the word 'Pomological' in my life until this article. My brain scanned it as starting with P-o-r-n, because that made more sense in context.
At this point, I've made my choice. I'm not going to look up the word. (I've lived more than 50 years, it's not likely to add much value for me now.) I'm not going to read the article. (It could only disappoint...)
I think less of parkerhiggins.net for tricking me with this article title. I think less of fanf2 for submitting this tricky article title. I resent even the time I've spent writing this. Bleah!
This actually inspired me to go out and start (slowly) cataloging mostly historic 100+ yr old landscapes that were locked behind mostly non-US pay-to-access (cough British museums cough), and write a flurry of emails to institutions encouraging uploading high res versions. I'm contemplating a project to put historic paintings "on the map", depicting their geographically represented locations (when applicable), giving a window into the past. Maybe I should circle back on this effort to get more paintings released...
You can have fun with 'em since they're public domain (:
Note 1: The metadata, such as title, author, etc. seem to be missing. If anyone knows of a collection with all that included, let me know (it's not in the EXIF either, I spot-checked).
EDIT: aha! Here is metadata, which you can correlate to the image files: https://github.com/Wumms/pomological
Note 2: I saw this in the MARC catalog record:
Ambiguity like this is way too common...
For another data point, this catalog.data.gov site[1] lists the license as "us-pd" (ie public domain in the USA). But then yeah, like you said the attribution demand is invalid.
[1] https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/u-s-department-of-agricultu...
https://www.winstoncooke.com/blog/rotation-based-compression...
I can certainly relate to this. I started scripting for very obtuse reasons, and quickly started seeing things everywhere which I could apply a little code to and improve my life.
Awesome work either way!
At this point, I've made my choice. I'm not going to look up the word. (I've lived more than 50 years, it's not likely to add much value for me now.) I'm not going to read the article. (It could only disappoint...)
I think less of parkerhiggins.net for tricking me with this article title. I think less of fanf2 for submitting this tricky article title. I resent even the time I've spent writing this. Bleah!