Trivia

Trivia

Why?

Several reasons, really. Most importantly, I needed an application to manage all my duplicate pictures :-). But there were other reasons:

• It's a chance for me to do the best job I can on a piece of software. I write software for a living, and most of the time, I get to work on a piece of software only until it just meets the requirements, and then it's time to move on. Of course I understand that this is necessary, yet it always leaves me wishing I could have done just a little more. So on this project, I get to polish all I want and take as much pride in the finished product as I like.
• It has given me an opportunity to learn a bunch of new tools I wouldn't use at work, such as JSPF, JIMFS, Mockito, FileDrop, Java internationalization, and so forth.
• It's a way of giving back to the open-source community, which has helped me a great deal with all sorts of useful software.

So who is she?

The woman in the Sui Generis logo is Venus from Sandro Botticelli's unforgettable painting The Birth of Venus. Sui Generis translates, more or less, into "one of a kind," and so for the logo I wanted something that symbolized that. And what better to symbolize uniqueness than a famous piece of art? I could have chosen any famous painting, sculpture, or whatnot, but The Birth of Venus has a special meaning for me. Many years ago I was traveling through Florence and visited the Uffizi Museum, where the painting is displayed. When I saw the painting with my own eyes I was dumbstruck -- the gold of her hair, the vibrant blue of the ocean, and the general aspect of seeing the painting for myself was breathtaking. I have never seen a reproduction that remotely captures the beauty of the original. They all seem so bland by comparison. The original is stunning. For the next ten or twenty minutes I just sat in that gallery, watching the reactions of visitors as they saw the painting for the first time. They all reacted as I had done -- all conversation ceased and they just stood there, mute, as they took in the beauty before them. It was amazing to watch.