An application to write about 2 topics for another website. (I never heard from them but when I looked more the site seemed to be shutting down).

ASCII Art

The Forgotten Art Made for the Internet When it was Still New Does ASCII Art Belong, Forgotten, in the Internet Archives? The Internet Art Almost No One Knows About The Art of Making Pictures When You Can't Draw a Straight Line

I still make ASCII art. I've seen it called a few things: keyboard art, type-based illustrations and text art. I think it is the most often stolen, and yet unknown, art form on the Internet. But, that's not what I really want to write about. ASCII art is technically challenging, like putting together a puzzle. It can be pretty, it can even be coloured so it isn't just black and white. Images can be tiny or large, depending on the size of your viewing screen and the patience of the artist. I began making ASCII art because I thought it was amazing and I found a way to draw long after I had given up ever creating images myself. Making an image I feel proud of boosts me up and other days, when I'm down, making something small and simple at least helps me feel I accomplished something creative with the day. I know ASCII art is outdated. Once MS started bringing images into email and game developers discovered pixels, text art began a decline into musty archives. I still love it. Misplaced, ridiculous loyalty possibly, but I still make ASCII art. Not a great focus for a story, but the real story is the art and I'm not short of good images to showcase with a post on Messy Nessy.

https://asciiartist.com/ http://asciiartist.com/ldbasciiart/ - Private link which I don't share on the site. All the ldb art is created by myself so I can use whatever works to illustrate the post. I take screen shots of the art in MS Notepad with the font set to bold. That seems to work best/ easiest.

Rural (Urban) Exploration

Finding Lost Ontario with a Digital Camera and the Wrong Shoes Exploring Abandoned Places While Not Really Believing in Ghosts Exploring Lost Ontario While Saving the Odd Garden Flower Exploring Abandoned Farmhouses in Ontario Photographing Old Ontario Farmhouses

I am 56 and still photographing old, derelict farmhouses here in Ontario. I didn't think that was unusual until younger people told me they were surprised I was so old. (They said it much kinder than that). I guess I am a relic, photographing other relics. But, I love the old buildings, places and the odd bits of this and that I find along the way. Abandoned and forgotten gardens with surviving plants among the wildflowers. A green Pyrex bowl which I found buried in the dirt as I walked through a field after photographing a farm house which was a wreck then and is now demolished. I don't like to call them wrecks. It seems an unkind word. Modern ruins is a little more gentile. I seldom enter the old places. Partly because that crosses some polite Canadian line of courtesy and respect to the house itself. Partly, because I'm middle age and not too skinny. Exploring old places is a bit risky. I can talk my way out of questions from people, it helps being an older woman then. Plus, I really do love the old places and listening to the stories people will tell once they decide I'm no threat. Being caught is not a problem for me. Bigger issues have been animals like birds, bees, and frogs underfoot. Unknown ground when walking around long grass and deep snow can trip you up, literally. Anyway, this is the story I would like to write. Mostly about exploring as an older woman and the places I have found. Photos and imagery are no problem, I have been exploring with a digital camera since 2006.

https://ontarioexploration.com - Not a great link to see the images right now. I have just bought software to add watermarks to my images and I've changed my site from WordPress . A lot was lost along the way. I have all the photos on my hard drive, just not yet on the site again.

Urban Exploration is about Exploring

Urban exploration is what it sounds like - exploring urban areas. We take photos so we can:

• get a better look at what we have seen
• remember what we have seen
• share what we have seen with others

Urban exploration is about history and photography.

Graffiti, destruction of property, salvaging from old places and setting fire and otherwise causing harm is not part of urban exploration. Also, explorers do not skywalk. Rooftopping is one thing, but the intent is to get a photograph safely, not to risk you life hanging over the edge of a building and getting a photo to prove you did it and dare others to do the same.

Urban exploration has some grey areas. Some explorers are very rigid in what they consider the rules. However, everyone who truly goes into this wanting to see old places does not want to see harm come to them. We don't want to cause the property owner or management trouble or expense. The idea is to see the places and then leave as if we were never there.

This means we don't move things around. We don't leave garbage. We don't break things. We don't paint on things. We don't try to jump off things.

Take only photographs and leave only footprints. It's a great rule. People who don't stick to it cross the line and become vandals.

What am I missing?

• rooftopping
• roadside memorials
• street furniture
• cemetery exploring
• cemetery photography
• gargoyles
• ghost signs
• street photography
• public clocks
• manufactured landscapes
• dark tourism
• paranormal
• prehistory
• industrial exploration
• rural exploration
• urban exploration
• old buildings
• lighthouses
• backyard exploring

Jeff Chapman (1973 - 2005) #RIPNinjalicious

Jeff Chapman was a Canadian urban explorer, known as Ninjalicious. Jeff published Access All Areas and the founder of Infiltration, zines and website.

"It's the thrill of discovery that fascinates me. Yes, I know I'm not the first person there, but I can honestly say I found it and I earned the experience for myself. After exploring for a while, you get a wonderful feeling that you're "in on" the secret workings of cities. You know what's under your feet and what's behind the closed doors and what the city looks like from the highest office towers, while almost everyone around you only ever looks at the public areas and never truly pays attention to urban structures unless they've paid admission to take a look." - Jeff Chapman/ Ninjalicious

Source: Interview at Philadelphia City Paper with Neil Gladstone (1998?)

This month, August 2015, marks ten years since Jeff Chapman passed away. I thought someone should post in his honour. I never met him personally. I did email with him, twice. I met his wife, Liz, at a Broken Pencil Zine Festival in Toronto.

I attended the Festival to buy Access All Areas: A User's Guide to the Art of Urban Exploration, see some of Jeff's (and other publishers) zines and take a look at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto. I was just beginning to explore with a digital camera then. Before that I just didn't know what I was doing had a name (and film was expensive!).

A tribute can still be found at the Toronto Architectural Conservancy 

Jeff Chapman (September 19, 1973 -- August 23, 2005), better known by the pseudonym Ninjalicious, was a Toronto-based urban explorer, fountaineer, writer and founder of the urban exploration zine Infiltration: the zine about going places you're not supposed to go. He was also a prominent author and editor for YIP magazine, as well as its website, Yip.org. Chapman attended York University in the early 1990s and later studied book and magazine publishing at Centennial College. He went on to serve as Editor at History Magazine and as Director of the Toronto Architectural Conservancy board.

Chapman died of cholangiocarcinoma on Tuesday, August 23, 2005 --- three years after a successful liver transplant at Toronto General Hospital (a location he loved to explore). He was 31 years old.

Source: Wikipedia: Ninjalicious

Toronto's own late Jeff Chapman (a.k.a. "Ninjalicious") published his first printed issue of Infiltration, "The zine about going places you're not supposed to go," in 1996. Though Toronto may not live in the imagination of people around the world, Chapman made this city's sewers famous for his global readers. His work lives on in Access all Areas, his book published just before his death to cancer in 2005, and at infiltration.org.

Source: Shawn Micallef: Getting to know Toronto's sewers

Under the alias Ninjalicious is where Jeff made his biggest mark. In his early twenties he spent long periods of time in the hospital battling various diseases. Often bored, he and his IV pole would go exploring the hospital, investigating the basement, peaking behind doors, looking for interesting rooms and equipment. It was here his love for the under explored side of buildings developed, and upon returning to health he created Infiltration -- the zine about going places you're not supposed to go.

Infiltration has had a profound influence on urban exploration in Toronto and around the world, as evidenced by the hundreds of tributes left for him in the Urban Exploration Resource forum. Ninjalicious had a strong code of ethics which he promoted, including no stealing or vandalizing while exploring. Issue 1, all about Ninj's beloved Royal York Hotel, was published in 1996, and the zine was continually published throughout the years ending most recently with Issue 25: Military Leftovers.

Source: Sean Lerner: Torontoist: Death of a Ninja

About ten years ago I was in a Toronto bookshop and found a copy of Infiltration. Subtitled "the zine about going places you're not supposed to go", it was devoted to the escapades of the author, Jeff Chapman --- or "Ninjalicious", to use his nom de plume --- as he explored the many off-limits areas in famous Toronto buildings such as the Royal York hotel, CN Tower, or St. Mike's Hospital. In each issue, Chapman would pick a new target and infiltrate it --- roaming curiously around, finding hilarious secrets, then describing it with effervescently witty delight. Chapman had the best prose of any zine author I've read anywhere. Many zinesters are clever, of course, but Chapman wrote with a 19th-century literary journalist's attention to detail; nothing escaped his notice, from the relative fluffiness of the towels in executive lounges to the color of the rust pools in a mysterious, hangar-sized room buried below Toronto's subway system.

Source: Clive Thompson: Collision Detection: R.I.P. "Ninjalicious" --- the founder of urban exploration

infiltration The zine about going places you're not supposed to go, like tunnels, abandoned buildings, rooftops, hotel pools and more.

Source: Infiltration

See also:

• This American Life from WBEZ: Audio interview with Ira Glass
• The original thread from the UER forum.
• Broken Pencil: 50 People (And Places) We Love
• Broken Pencil: Access All Areas: Remembering Ninjalicious and Infiltration Zine 

cancon
what is it that attracts you to going where you're not supposed to go?

Ninjalicious
Healthy human curiosity about the workings of the world I live in, of course. I mean, it's free, it's fun and it hurts no one. A harder-to-answer question would be: why doesn't everyone?

cancon
what are the tools of your trade?

Ninjalicious
Usually I travel very lightly, with a pen, paper, a Swiss army knife, a camera and a flashlight. That's about all the equipment I need to have a good time in 90% of the places I visit. I take along more specialized equipment, such as rubber boots or various props, for specific targets.

Source: Cancon Interview with James Hörner