Sunday, May 31, 2009
Michael Pollan on American perspective of We and Nature, from his book Second Nature:
A society that produces “gardens” (or “anti-gardens”) like Central Park is one that assumes nature and culture are fundamentally and irreconcilably opposed. And it seems to me that in order to design true gardens of distinction one must have a vision of how the two can be harmonized. It may be this that we lack. Americans have historically tended to regard nature as a cure for culture, or vice versa. Faced with the question of what to do with the land, we always seem to come up with the same crude alternatives: to virtuously subdue it in the name of “progress,” or to place it strictly off-limits in “wilderness areas,” hallowed places we go seeking an antidote to city life.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Frank Lloyd Wright remarking on the Marin County, CA Civic Center:
…the good building is not the one that hurts the landscape, but is one that makes the landscape more beautiful than it was before that building was built.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Wendell Berry, How To Be a Poet:
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
(Via Derek.)
Monday, May 25, 2009
In my wife’s last year of college, our first year of marriage, we lived in a student-housing duplex adjacent the campus. She was an Art Education major, and I had the privilege of her art professor becoming a sort of mentor to me. He was gentle, but tough; patient, yet persistent. I learned about a perspective on creating art — the why of creating art — that I haven’t heard talked about by many others, especially non-artists.
A lot of people have this idea that art is created merely to impress the artist or their audience. Look what I can do! And a lot of people looking at art walk away with the impression that their 3-year-old could have done that or better.
It seems comparatively easy for an artist to answer the who, what, where, and how of art making. Answering why is another story altogether. It is, I would argue, the most difficult question to answer in art making. It requires us to think beyond mere subject, technique, style, form, light, energy, etc. It requires us to embrace ideas and philosophies on a level of …
Friday, May 22, 2009
I have had internal debates about keeping my data online vs locally on my computer. I was on “vacation” once, had my computer with me to do some work and couldn’t access my email because there were no internets and I was using Gmail. Google Gears hadn’t been invented yet (at least not for Gmail) and I subsequently converted to IMAP and Apple Mail to avoid such future circumstances.
I’ve used 37signals’ Basecamp and Backpack off and on. Online/offline access have been issues with the flux (although Basecamp has also seemed a bit too much for just myself).
My brothernlaw recently had his apartment broken into, his computer and backup drive stolen among other things. He was good to be making a backup of his computer, but his mistake was not keeping that backup in a remote place. He lost everything. Major bummer. Good news is that he’s getting a new aluminum MacBook.
Well, I am learning to love The Cloud.
A prerequisite problem with offline access is the impulse “need” to be online or connected all the time. The guys at 37signals …
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
I am happy to finally share with the world a project I have recently been involved with: We Love You So. It’s Spike Jonze’ new website for his upcoming film rendition of the classic Where The Wild Things Are, in which he and others co-author a blog, reflecting on “many of the small influences that have converged to make this massive project a reality.” I’m excited about the film. And I’m excited I got to work on this website.
Dallas Clayton worked directly with Spike to oversee the entire project. Landon Metz put together the overall design. I worked directly with Matt Rubin who managed the details and overall project communication, and then I wrote and developed everything for the CMS. That’s how it worked. I hope you enjoy it.
Monday, May 11, 2009
As I’ve been riding my bike around town the last few days, I’ve noticed other bicyclists rolling right through red lights in the midst of traffic. It drives me nuts. The law is the law whether you’re on a bike or in a car. A person can make a fine argument about making ‘rolling stops’ in neighborhood intersections where stop signs are present and automobiles are not (and I’ll likely agree with it). But rolling through a red light when perpendicular traffic obviously has the right of way is a few things: ridiculous, stupid, dangerous, and careless, among other things. Rolling through a crosswalk does not make us pedestrians. We are still traffic, and we ought to behave as such. I’m also seeing bicyclers weaving back and forth amidst automobile traffic without any signaling, causing folks in cars to overreact and move into the lane of opposing traffic. This obviously creates a dangerous situation. These behaviors make bicyclers look really, really bad from the perspective of automobile drivers (and other cyclists behind them). If folks on bikes can’t obey traffic laws, then there is no sense in hoping for a city that continues to grow …
Friday, May 08, 2009
Andy Clarke on the worth of our time and expertise:
Helping this client took less than two minutes out of my day. Will they receive an invoice for a minimum time-block? Hell yes.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Receiving messages via Twitter has become more reliable than email. I don’t have to sift through any Twitter spam to see if I’ve missed something legitimate, and it’s easy to block those who attempt to abuse the system. These days I am receiving 150-200 email spam each day, which no longer lends itself to sifting. I ignore it and hope I haven’t missed anything.
Photo by Margaret Bourke-Whike
I can’t help but think we’ve brought this upon ourselves. No one likes spam, but neither do we (Americans) like paying for stuff. We’d rather let advertisers pay for everything and willingly subject ourselves to their commercials and propagandist garbage. Our websites, streets, highways, public benches, buses and their stops, mailboxes, t-shirts, etc., are filled with advertisements — that is to say both our personal and public spaces we willingly deface and degrade. And we seem to like it this way — we certainly aren’t doing anything …
