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...
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!
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!!!
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.
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"
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).
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.
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.
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.
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!
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...
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.
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.
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!
> " 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.
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...
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!
Awesome work either way!
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.