The first in a (hopefully) recurring series: my weekly roundup of interesting things!

A native OS X GIMP client was released this week, relieving the need to run GIMP bootstrapped on X11. Both this release and an alternative native client crashed on first run on Mountain Lion. Another launch and everything was smooth. Performance seems to be overall better, however small quirks still exist. No show-stoppers so far.

There's a nice write-up on an art exhibit that was in Copenhagen. The exhibit is "New English Calligraphy," or — in other words — English written in the style of traditional Chinese characters. Photos of the exhibit show how strikingly foreign the arrangement of otherwise-recognizable characters can be. Pretty awesome.

I use HTML5 on a regular basis. However, the existence of image filter effects escaped me! There are a few demonstrations out there, but this filter tutorial sums up the technique pretty nicely and in-line with examples. Support for filters is pretty sparse, and performance isn't that great, but it is helping to blur the line between native and web UI. I haven't tried out filters yet, but I am really curious how performance scales with image size.

The beauty of automatic watches has snagged my attention. I purchased an entry level Seiko, and from the subtle clinking of the winding mechanism to the ticking of the escapement system, there's a lot of life in this little thing. There's just something about wearing a piece of machinery on your wrist. It's somewhat ironic that I'm so intrigued by an analog sibling of overwhelmingly-digital timekeeping devices. This is mostly a note for myself, but it looks like this is a good write-up of a much more sophisticated version of what I wear on my wrist: the 7S26 automatic movement.

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