Buffalo (NY, USA)

Buffalo is the second largest city of New York state, just after NYC. I think Buffalo flag is almost nice, but I think the seal just ruin it:


I think the basic pattern is very interesting, specially for a 1920s flag. The bolts represent the city as "City of Light", due to its early widespread adoption of electric lighting. The seal shows city's harbor — very generic, actually.

After looking a bit for city's symbols, I think I found a winner: buffalo, the animal. Yes, the American bison, not related to African or water buffalos. A bison appears in University at Buffalo's coat of arms as such, for example. Here's the result:


I considered using a brown buffalo, but decided for adopting strictly the original flag scheme. I think the result is amazing, and a much better contender among American best city flags.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.
I'm very sorry by absence last week.
The buffalo design is based on "Buffalo Embassy Project", by Mike Wozniak.
By the way, do Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo?

Bangkok (Thailand)

Bangkok is the capital and most populous city of Thailand.

It's flag looks more or less like that:


The flag shows city's seal, consisting of Hindu god Indra riding Erawan (or Airavata), his three-headed white elephant, above the clouds. The seal itself is based in a drawing by Siamese prince Naris (1863-1947).

The seal itself looks good. However, something as complicate as that has no place in a flag. Indra himself is usually depicted in very complex ways, so I decided just for Erawan, on a green background.


Erawan is more often associated with Laos, but it's also very significant on Thai monarchy symbolism, being even present in royal coat of arms from 1873 to 1910.

I'm not sure if it's too synthetic, but I think it's very elegant.

Comments and suggestions are always very welcome.
I'm not expert in Hindu mythology. If I made some mistake, please correct me in comments area.

Hacker culture

The "hacker culture" is a subculture that emerged in 1950-60s among computing academia. Nonetheless, the word "hacker" is negatively associated in media with the "black hat crackers" (in hacker slang), usually seen as against true "hacker" spirit.

As a computing major, I was always interested by the hacker ethic. Searches for "hacker flag" will only return pirate or Anonymous flags, that, in my humble opinion, doesn't embrace the whole hacker culture.

So I decided to make a flag by my own. Unfortunately, my flag is not a "hack", but a repurposing of Eric Raymond's proposal for a hacker emblem: the "glider", an interesting pattern often found in Conway's Game of Life.









From now, I'm sorry if that all that's Greek to somebody. Flag is coming next!

Based in that proposal, I designed the following flag:

















I've rotated the table, making a cleverer use of space, in my opinion. I've chosen an exclusively black and white pattern not just for chromatic minimalism, but also because it's nearer "glider's" most common representation, and permits many different associations: 0s and 1s, black and white hats, the often-seen link with anarchism, and probably many more.

Said that, variations could be made replacing background colors, or even using a national or rainbow flag as background.

I've tried different rotations and common representations of the "glider" pattern,but I guess it's by far my favorite.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.
Any corrections or clearance in hacker culture is also very welcome.