NY Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff on the legacy of Jane Jacobs and why her views on cities aren't universally applicable:
The activists of Ms. Jacobs's generation may have saved SoHo from Mr. Moses' bulldozers, but they could not stop it from becoming an open-air mall. The old buildings are still there, the streets are once again paved in cobblestone, but the rich mix of manufacturers, artists and gallery owners has been replaced by homogenous crowds of lemming-like shoppers. Nothing is produced there any more. It is a corner of the city that is nearly as soulless, in its way, as the superblocks that Ms. Jacobs so reviled.
But I have a hard time believing -- as Mr. Ouroussoff does -- that:
...on an urban island packed with visual noise, the plaza at Lincoln Center -- or even at the old World Trade Center -- can be a welcome contrast in scale, a moment of haunting silence amid the chaos. Similarly, the shimmering glass towers that frame lower Park Avenue are awe-inspiring precisely because they offer a sharp contrast to the quiet tree-lined streets of the Upper East Side.
Surely we can devise better ways of introducing contrasts in scale into our cities than building Lincoln Centers.
Ouroussoff's article includes a companion audio slideshow of him talking about Jacobs and also of West Village residents sharing their views on their neighborhood that Jacbos lived in and wrote about long ago.
Infrared photography of some NBA players. In the photos, the uniforms are almost completely white and tattoos "pop" quite a bit, particularly on some of the more darker skinned players. (via th)
Must be something in the water today...Paul Boutin has a story on Slate today that makes the same point about BitTorrent, YouTube, and Google Video that I did this morning (although somewhat more succinctly and entertainingly):
The guys behind YouTube hit the sweet spot. Most important, they made it head-slappingly easy to publish and play video clips by handling the tricky parts automatically. Given up on BitTorrent because it feels like launching a mission to Mars? If you've sent an e-mail attachment, you've got the tech skills to publish on YouTube.
The final paragraph of the article contains this interesting bit:
The same Alexa plots that show MySpace and YouTube obliterating top sites reveal that Flickr, Digg and del.icio.us have plateaued with audiences barely bigger than Slate's. Photos, news, and other people's bookmarks just aren't as interesting as bootleg TV and checking out the hotties. The easier it gets to use, the less geeky the Net becomes, and the more it starts to look like real life.
Expect more bootleg TV and hotties from kottke.org in the future...I need some Alexa love.
Steve Jobs to Apple shareholders: I have no interest in running Disney. He also said that he'll be spending less time at Disney than he did at Pixar, which is good news for Apple.
The other day I realized that within my little online social circle, there's been a lot less mention of BitTorrent lately. It used to be that someone would link to a cool video, the site hosting the video file would go down because of high traffic, and then someone who grabbed the video before the outage would put it up on a torrent site so that everyone could see it again.
And then YouTube and Google Video came along. They offered free hosting and fast (free) bandwidth for videos so when people want to put some neat video of something on their sites, they just slapped it on YT or GV and pointed to it. And more important to the point about BitTorrent, they work completely within the browser environment. You upload videos to YT in the browser (GV has a standalone app for uploading) and the Flash-based viewer works in the browser (most Web users have Flash installed). They offered a seamless end-to-end solution to finding and watching videos all in one application.
Compare that with how you typically watch a video with BT. First you download a torrent file, then open that file up in your BT client (which you need to have previously downloaded and installed), then the file downloads, and finally you open that file in a media player, generally QuickTime, Windows Media Player, or some other player that needs to be downloaded and installed...and hopefully you have the right versions and codecs for the video in question. And that's just the viewing side of things...publishing videos via BT was even more difficult, particularly for non-technical folks.
That BitTorrent took off at all is a testament to the utility of downloading files from multiple sources simultaneously, but it's also telling that once an easier-to-use alternative came along that offered many of the key advantages of BT, people switched1...and really quickly too. Eventually BT will have to find its way into the browser (AllPeers is promising a Firefox extension that will do just that) and somehow overcome the multiple media players problem in order to find success.
[1] For videos of the type I'm talking about anyway. BT is by no means unpopular these days, particularly for feature-length movies, lossless music files, and other really large files. YT and GV are only taking BT's "marketshare" in the realm of short video. ↩
Conversation between filmmakers Errol Morris and Adam Curtis. "People criticized my film by saying things like, 'Why aren't you balanced? What aren't you putting in the other views?' And my response was, 'What if the other view is wrong?' That's the real problem of the balanced view - what's called "perceived wisdom." What if perceived wisdom's wrong?"
How do you build (or grow) a great city? Kenneth Kidd ponders the future of Toronto.
Do rich artists make bad art? "When you become as rich as [Warhol or Dali], being as rich as this becomes your story. If you don't make art about being a multimillionaire, you are being dishonest. If you do, you can hardly claim the universality of great art." (via rw)
What the huh? Apple has disbanded the development team for Aperture? Gruber, tell me what I think about this.
Among the many things New York is famous for is the tiny apartments of its inhabitants. Our first apartment here was about 400 square feet and somehow the people who lived downstairs from us in an apartment with the same footprint fit two people and two pitbull-type dogs into that space. In a recently released book, Apartment Therapy's Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan reveals that he and his wife live in a 250 square foot apartment in the West Village.
Having such small apartments, city residents want to make the most of the space that they have. In designing a loft apartment for his son, architect Kyu Sung Woo came up with an interesting solution to the space problem...he fit two stories into a one-story apartment. The result is The Interlocking Puzzle Loft, a surprisingly spacious two-bedroom palace crammed into 700 square feet.
As shown and described in this article from Dwell, the key element in the loft is the half-height bedroom above the kitchen and the bedroom's walkway positioned above the short downstairs hall closet and back kitchen counter, which allows the apartment's inhabitants to stand up in the bedroom. Pretty genius idea.
Winterhouse (along with the AIGA) is sponsoring an award for design writing and criticism. There's a main award ($5000) and a student award ($1000). Be nice to see some Web design writing in there.
Short rememberance of Jane Jacobs by architect Witold Rybczynski. "The lively city districts that Jacobs championed, including her beloved Village, have become exclusive enclaves, closed to all but the extremely wealthy. She always considered the amenities of city life to be everyday and widely available goods. Little could she have imagined then that they would become luxuries instead."
Science blog Cocktail Party Physics has a list of "physics cocktails" in the sidebar (scroll down a bit). The Black Hole is "so called because after one of these, you have already passed the event horizon of inebriation." Boy, am I a huge sucker for physics puns.
Old 70s song about the subway from Sesame Street. This went totally over my head as a kid, but as a NYC resident, it's awesome. On the subway. Subway!
Matthew Baldwin ruminates on loopholes: tax, political, semantic, legal, and otherwise. "Even when the perpetrator is doing something reprehensible [...] you can't help but marvel at a loophole-monger's ability to think both inside and outside the box, to adhere to the rules while simultaneously sidestepping them."
Great set of publicity photos taken by French Ministry for Tourism of celebrities flying Air France in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. They were found at a flea market for a euro each. Includes Ursula Andress, Louis Armstrong, Henry Miller, Marlene Dietrich, Cary Grant, a great one of Alfred Hitchcock, and one of a pre-WWII John F. Kennedy. (thx, dov)
Powerful photo essay on Chernobyl, 20 years after the accident. Photographer Paul Fusco says the damage was so great that he thought he was looking at "a different race of people". (thx, lisa)
Film critic Jim Emerson recently compiled a list of 102 movies that you should see before you can consider yourself movie literate:
...they [are] the movies you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies. They're the common cultural currency of our time, the basic cinematic texts that everyone should know, at minimum, to be somewhat "movie-literate."
I've reproduced Emerson's list here and marked with an asterisk those that I've seen.
* 2001: A Space Odyssey
* The 400 Blows
8 1/2
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
* Alien
All About Eve
* Annie Hall
* Apocalypse Now
* Bambi
The Battleship Potemkin
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Big Red One
The Bicycle Thief
The Big Sleep
* Blade Runner
Blowup
* Blue Velvet
Bonnie and Clyde
Breathless
Bringing Up Baby
Carrie
* Casablanca
Un Chien Andalou
Children of Paradise / Les Enfants du Paradis
* Chinatown
* Citizen Kane
* A Clockwork Orange
* The Crying Game
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Days of Heaven
* Dirty Harry
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
* Do the Right Thing
La Dolce Vita
Double Indemnity
* Dr. Strangelove
Duck Soup
* E.T. -- The Extra-Terrestrial
Easy Rider
* The Empire Strikes Back
The Exorcist
* Fargo
* Fight Club
Frankenstein
The General
* The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II
* Gone With the Wind
* GoodFellas
* The Graduate
Halloween
* A Hard Day's Night
Intolerance
It's a Gift
* It's a Wonderful Life
Jaws
The Lady Eve
Lawrence of Arabia
M
Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior
The Maltese Falcon
* The Manchurian Candidate
Metropolis
Modern Times
* Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Nashville
The Night of the Hunter
Night of the Living Dead
* North by Northwest
* Nosferatu
* On the Waterfront
Once Upon a Time in the West
Out of the Past
Persona
Pink Flamingos
Psycho
* Pulp Fiction
Rashomon
* Rear Window
Rebel Without a Cause
Red River
Repulsion
The Rules of the Game
* Scarface
The Scarlet Empress
* Schindler's List
The Searchers
* The Seven Samurai
Singin' in the Rain
Some Like It Hot
A Star Is Born
A Streetcar Named Desire
Sunset Boulevard
* Taxi Driver
The Third Man
Tokyo Story
* Touch of Evil
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Trouble in Paradise
Vertigo
* West Side Story
The Wild Bunch
* The Wizard of Oz
That's 40 out of 102. My pre-1970 movie knowledge is just plain pathetic, but I've seen all six movies on the list made since 1990 (and 5 out of 7 of the 80s movies). And I think I've seen Bambi (when I was a kid), but I marked it as seen even though I'm not completely sure. As for what's missing from the list, I'm not even going to go there given my poor showing. There are some hardcore movie fans reading this...anyone seen them all?
Long obit for Jane Jacobs. She honed her thinking by having imaginary conversations with Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and a Saxon chieftain. Here's another obit from the Toronto Star.
This is going to sound like an Onion article but isn't. David Copperfield got held up at gunpoint after a show last weekend and when the robbers asked him for his valuables, "he pulled out all of his pockets for Riley to see he had nothing, even though he had a cellphone, passport and wallet stuffed in them". Copperfield's got a gun pointed at his head and he's doing an impromptu magic show for the thieves! What's better than that? Nothing. (via the superficial)
Jane Jacobs died this morning at age 89. I can't begin to express how much her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities has influenced and enhanced my understanding and enjoyment of living with other people in groups large and small. Sad, sad news. (thx, todd)
Mark Simonson notes the decline in license plate design. They've become increasingly bad at their primary use...quick and easy identification of the car.
Some photos and sketches of WWI ships painted with "Razzle Dazzle" camouflage. "The primary goal of dazzle painting [which took visual cues from cubism] was to confuse the U-boat commander who was trying to observe the course and speed of his target." (via cf)
One of the main characters in the film The Night of the White Pants, played by Nick Stahl, wears a Threadless tshirt (this one, which I happen to have as well) for most of the movie.
In 1962, Arthur C. Clarke was touring Bell Labs when he heard a demonstration of a song sung by an IBM 704 computer programmed by physicist John L. Kelly. The song, the first ever performed by a computer, was called "Daisy Bell", more commonly known as "Bicycle Built for Two" or "Daisy, Daisy". When Clarke collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on 2001: A Space Odyssey, they had HAL sing it while Dave powered him down.
A clip of a 1963 synthesized computer speech demonstration by Bell Labs featuring "Daisy Bell" was included on an album for the First Philadelphia Computer Music Festival. You can listen to it (it's the last track) and the rest of the album at vintagecomputermusic.com. (via mark)
Update: A reader just reminded me that HAL may have been so named because each letter is off by one from IBM, although Arthur C. Clarke denies this. (thx, justin)
As part of their "simplicity" ad campaign, Philips is paying Time Inc to put the table of contents in some of their magazines on page 1 (the TOC is typically further into the magazine in a more irritating position). It's funny that there was concern about this type of advertising affecting the layout of the magazine (in the editorial/sales wall sort of way) when the whole idea of pushing the TOC to page 10 or 20 is to accomodate advertising in the first place.
An Iraqi star of the movie Flight 93 (which has been getting great reviews) won't be able to see the premiere of the film in NYC because the US government won't let him into the country.
George W. Bush, dissident president? "Now that President Bush is increasingly alone in pushing for freedom..." The WSJ editorial page is laughably bad sometimes.
Short remembrance by Rob Janoff about designing the logo for Apple Computer. The logo was to be black & white to save on printing costs, but "Jobs was resolute, arguing that color was the key to humanizing the company".
New business practice: bring your own laptop. "Basically treat the employee's laptop as you would treat the employees's pants: require it, pay the employee enough to buy it, and provide the infrastructure that works with it, but that's all. Give the employee the price of one laptop per two years, plus, say, the price of one major troubleshooting session per six months." Very good idea.
Greg Saunders has a suggestion for a simple Democratic ad campaign for the midterm elections consisting of three graphs: gas prices, oil company stock prices, and oil company campaign contributions.
New coinage by Simon Willison: pokemonetise, v., "to make money by appealing to the stupid human instinct to collect dumb things".
Horrible Segues, With Local Anchorman Clive Rutledge. "After seeing that clip featuring the hottie in the halter-top, something else is rising, too, heh-heh, if you catch my drift -- that's right: interest rates. Today the Federal Reserve recommended they be upped by half a percent."
Set of photos depicting NYC in the 80s. Everytime I see pictures of subway cars covered with graffiti, I marvel at how clean the cars are now.
In the 1960s, a young Al Gore had the good fortune to study under Roger Revelle at Harvard University. Revelle was one of the first scientists to claim that the earth may not be able to effectively deal with all of the carbon dioxide generated by the earth's rapidly increasing human population. The American Institute of Physics called Revelle's 1957 paper with Hans Suess "the opening shot in the global warming debates". Gore took Revelle's lessons to heart, becoming a keen supporter of the environment during his government service.
Since losing the 2000 Presidential election to George W. Bush, Al Gore has focused his efforts on things other than politics; among other things, he's been crisscrossing the world delivering a presentation on global warming. Gore's presentation now forms the foundation of a new film, An Inconvenient Truth (view the trailer).
In organizing my thoughts about the film, I found I couldn't improve upon David Remnick's review in the New Yorker. In particular:
It is, to be perfectly honest (and there is no way of getting around this), a documentary film about a possibly retired politician giving a slide show about the dangers of melting ice sheets and rising sea levels. It has a few lapses of mise en scene. Sometimes we see Gore gravely talking on his cell phone--or gravely staring out an airplane window, or gravely tapping away on his laptop in a lonely hotel room--for a little longer than is absolutely necessary. And yet, as a means of education, "An Inconvenient Truth" is a brilliantly lucid, often riveting attempt to warn Americans off our hellbent path to global suicide. "An Inconvenient Truth" is not the most entertaining film of the year. But it might be the most important.
Watching the film, I realized -- far too late to move to Florida and vote for him in 2000 -- that I'm a fan of Al Gore. He's smart & intellectually curious (the latter doesn't always follow from the former), understands science enough to explain it to the layperson without needlessly oversimplifying, and despite his reputation as somewhat of a robot, seems to be more of a real person than many politicians. As Remnick says:
One can imagine him as an intelligent and decent President, capable of making serious decisions and explaining them in the language of a confident adult.
The film has some small problems; many of the asides about Gore's life (particularly the 2000 election stuff) don't seem to fit cleanly into the main narrative, the connection it makes between global warming and Katrina is stronger than it should be, and the trailer is a little silly; this is a documentary about Al Gore and global warming after all, not The Day After Tomorrow or Armageddon. But the film really shines when it focuses on the presentation and Gore methodically and lucidly making the case for us needing to take action on global warming. An Inconvenient Truth opens in the US on May 24...do yourself a favor and seek it out when it comes to your local theater.
I can't find a permanent link to it, but for the next week or so, you can see the NY Times package on the Empire State Building, which turns 75 this year. Lots of photos, rememberances, etc.
What do they use in the movies when you see people snorting cocaine? Powdered sugar, baking powder, powdered milk, soy baby formula, or Ovaltine.
The evolution of the design of the Netflix envelope. We started using Netflix pretty early on, but I don't remember the first 3 or 4 designs.
Hollywood studios are increasingly not showing their movies to critics before the official release. "The media world is changing, and the people they want to reach are the kids who are looking at MySpace.com and exchanging instant messages about pictures aimed at them. Conventional critics don't matter."
Taste of Chinatown tomorrow (4/22) in NYC. Taste a variety of Chinese food for not so much money.
Bouchon Bakery has dog biscuits with foie gras and bacon in them. Taste test verdict? "Not good for humans. Good for spoiled dogs."
Luke Wroblewski wrote an article for Boxes and Arrows about using colors found in nature as inspiration for color palettes used in designing web sites. Unfortunately, the photos showing Luke's examples don't appear to be working on the site (the images have been fixed...thx, Lars), but Dave Shea published an image that illustrates Luke's technique.
When you're on the beach in the Caribbean as I was recently, it's difficult for the color palette to escape your notice. I whipped up this collection of colors from some of my photos (coming soon) from Mexico:
From left to right, you've got the pale blue of the ocean close to shore, the light brown of the sand, the green of the lush vegetation, and the deep clear blue of the sky.
Update: A couple people asked, so here are the hex values for the above colors: 3DB8AE, FFEDD8, 396600, and 0050A2, respectively.
Long, varied, and interesting recap from a participant at the 2006 United States Barista Championship. The drink he prepared for the competition (scroll to the bottom for the recipe) was called Coffee and a Cigar, a coffee drink with tobacco in it. "The tray never touches the table - ever. That's just a faux pas that I think should result in immediate disqualification. What reason is there to place your dirty tray bottom on your clean table? None."
Because of their Dollar Menu (which doesn't feature any of their recently added healthy menu items), sales at McDonald's have risen sharply over the last three years. In the article, a McDonald's rep calls the Egg McMuffin "a very nutritious sandwich". I like me some McMuffin, but if you look at its nutrition info (22% of your daily saturated fat and 77% of your daily cholesterol...and a McMuffin isn't that big), it's hard to imagine the circumstances under which you could call it "very nutritious".
This list of the 50 best book to film adaptions that I posted yesterday inspired Michael Hanscom to mark which of the movies he's seen and which of the books he's read. Here's my list:
1. [BM] 1984
2. [BM] Alice in Wonderland
3. [M] American Psycho
4. Breakfast at Tiffany's
5. Brighton Rock
6. Catch 22
7. [BM] Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
8. [M] A Clockwork Orange
9. [BM] Close Range (inc Brokeback Mountain)
10. The Day of the Triffids
11. Devil in a Blue Dress
12. [M] Different Seasons (inc The Shawshank Redemption)
13. [M] Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (aka Bladerunner)
14. [M] Doctor Zhivago
15. [M] Empire of the Sun
16. [M] The English Patient
17. [M] Fight Club
18. The French Lieutenant's Woman
19. [M] Get Shorty
20. [M] The Godfather
21. [M] Goldfinger
22. [M] Goodfellas
23. [M] Heart of Darkness (aka Apocalypse Now)
24. [B] The Hound of the Baskervilles
25. Jaws
26. The Jungle Book
27. A Kestrel for a Knave (aka Kes)
28. [M] LA Confidential
29. [M] Les Liaisons Dangereuses
30. [BM] Lolita
31. [M] Lord of the Flies
32. The Maltese Falcon
33. Oliver Twist
34. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
35. Orlando
36. [BM] The Outsiders
37. [BM] Pride and Prejudice
38. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
39. The Railway Children
40. Rebecca
41. [M] The Remains of the Day
42. [M] Schindler's Ark (aka Schindler's List)
43. [M] Sin City
44. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
45. [M] The Talented Mr Ripley
46. Tess of the D'Urbervilles
47. Through a Glass Darkly
48. To Kill a Mockingbird
49. [M] Trainspotting
50. The Vanishing
51. Watership Down
Note: In the cases of more than one movie adaptation (e.g. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), I marked it as viewed if I'd seen any version of the movie. Also, like Michael, I have no idea why the "top 50" list has 51 items.
The company that makes Moleskine notebooks is putting itself up for sale. Says the head of the company, "Moleskine is growing very quickly and it is becoming too big for us. We do not have the capacity to follow it through." Hipsters and GTDers ponder an uncertain organizational future. (via moleskinerie)
Ed Levine gets served a hot dog at Per Se. "I'm quite sure this was the first time Thomas Keller ever served anyone a hot dog in one of his restaurants." Let's see if this works...I totally want a hot dog next time I'm at Per Se. (via the eater)
A fan site on MySpace for the hot UK band Arctic Monkeys reportedly sold for $2000+, although it's unclear (because they took the auction page down) if eBay allowed the transaction to go through. Mena, how much for Ready Steadman Go?
Henry Abbott lets us know about Flint Star, a documentary film about basketball in Flint, Michigan. "It's amazing to watch. Six year olds who can dribble between their legs and hit a fadeaway. Dribble penetration followed by vicious alley-oop dunks. Flagrant fouls that will make you bark out loud as you're watching the DVD in bed next to your sleeping wife."
Time lapse videos from Vimeo, which relaunched nicely today.
A Manchester scientist has come up with a mathematical formula to assess the perfection of the female derriere. "Dr Holmes said that Kylie Minogue, whose celebrated bottom relaunched her career with the help of a pair of hotpants, would almost certainly score a perfect 80."
At lunch today, I ordered the pizza of the day, a BLT pizza. When it arrived, it was completely missing the L and had green peppers on it instead (which was apparently how it was supposed to be). That got us joking about how the restaurant just tosses random ingredients in their dishes and we amused ourselves for (probably) far too long by coming up with different not-so-tasty combinations.
We ordered the apple crisp for dessert (me: "I love apple crisp") and digging in upon its arrival, we discovered that half of the apples were actually peaches. (WTF?) Then the waiter showed up with an iced tea instead of Jonah's espresso -- an actual mistake this time, they were for another table -- but the damage was done and I was spraying apple/peach crisp/cobbler all over the place from laughing so hard about our meal from the Random Cafe.
A gigantic movie timeline that incorporates events from tons of movies. "Who'd have thought that while Gangs of New York's Amsterdam Vallon was killing Butcher Bill, down the road Abraham Lincoln was being kidnapped by Bill & Ted".
Upon my return to civilization last week, Greg Knauss wrote up some thoughts he had after doing the remaindered links here for two weeks. His thoughts, reproduced in full:
Over the past two weeks, David Jacobs, Anil Dash and I have attempted to reproduce (in some halting way) Jason Kottke, while the actual Jason Kottke was in rehab on his honeymoon. The attempt, on my part at least, has been an abject failure. Or haven't you noticed all the crappy links with "GK" at the end of them? Go-kart magazines? What the hell?
Like most of the disasters I've had a hand in, I've got a theory that both explains what happened and exonerates me. Ducking responsibility sounds better if you put on academic airs about it.
The theory: There are two kinds of bloggers, referential and experiential. Kottke is one. I, now two weeks too late in realizing this, am another.
The referential blogger uses the link as his fundamental unit of currency, building posts around ideas and experiences spawned elsewhere: Look at this. Referential bloggers are reporters, delivering pointers to and snippets of information, insight or entertainment happening out there, on the Intraweb. They can, and do, add their own information, insight and entertainment to the links they unearth -- extrapolations, juxtapositions, even lengthy and personal anecdotes -- but the outward direction of their focus remains their distinguishing feature.
The experiential blogger is inwardly directed, drawing entries from personal experience and opinion: How about this. They are storytellers (and/or bores), drawing whatever they have to offer from their own perspective. They can, and do, add links to supporting or explanatory information, even unique and undercited external sources. But their motivation, their impetus, comes from a desire to supply narrative, not reference it.
There's nothing here to imply that one type of blogger is better than the other. There are literally thousands -- OK, hundreds... OK, at least a dozen -- of both kinds that are valuable additions to the on-going conversation/food-fight/furry-cuddle that is the Internet. My point is that Jason Kottke is a very, very good referential blogger and I am a very, very bad one. And I'm sure I wouldn't have trouble finding a link that expresses this sentiment (many, many times over, with varying degrees of vehemence), but I'd rather say it from my own experience:
Welcome back, Jason. You've been missed.
After reading Greg's thoughts, Meg reminded me that Rebecca Blood had made a distinction between filter-style and journal-style bloggers in Weblogs: A History and Perspective. If you want to generalize outside the realm of weblogs, they're both talking about the difference between writers and editors1.
At a party a couple of years ago, I was talking to Nick Denton and he was puzzled by the number of bloggers who were getting book deals and told me that "the natural upgrade path for bloggers is from blogging to editing, not to writing". As Greg and Rebecca note, that doesn't apply to everyone, but it sure describes what I do here. kottke.org has always been more edited than written. I've never particularly thought of myself as a writer (I get by, but I wish I were better), but I do pay a lot of attention to how the writing is presented and contextualized...how the overall package "feels".
[1] And if you want to go even further out on the metaphorical gangplank here, the writer/editor dichotomy compares well to that of the musician/DJ. ↩
Nevermind...the video is fake. This is one of the most insane things I've ever seen....graffiti artist/entrepreneur Marc Ecko tagged Air Force One. The US govt can't even effectively guard the President's plane...how does Homeland Security expect to do it with all commercial passenger airplanes? (via airbag)
Cameratruck is a camera built out of a box van...essentially a giant pinhole camera. The negatives are almost three meters wide and are developed inside the truck/camera. The tour page has examples of photographs taken with the truck.
Online TurboTax as a text adventure game. "I should write up a complete walkthrough to solve Tax Return 2006 in as few moves as possible."
Starting next month, kottke.org will be joining The Deck, a "creative, web + design professionals advertising network" consisting of Waxy.org, 37signals, The Morning News, Coudal Partners, Daring Fireball, A List Apart, and now this site. Here's the announcement. I am honored for kottke.org to be associated with these fine sites.
Functionally, this means that a small ad (120x90 pixels) accompanied by a bit of text will appear on (nearly) every single page of the site beginning May 1. If you've been paying any sort of attention over the past few years, you know I'm not a big fan of advertising and putting ads on kottke.org was almost the last thing on my mind. From the perspective of the reader/viewer, ads are often pushy, irrelevant, redundant, deceitful, insipid, or just plain poorly done. But advertising can also be useful when it communicates clearly, is relevant to its audience, doesn't attempt to mislead, and lets the product/service in question sell itself. An artfully done advertisement can raise the boats of all concerned: the advertiser sells more products, the reader/viewer is informed of useful or appealing products and services, and the content provider is able to feed and clothe her family.
In the past few years, mechanisms for the delivery of advertising have evolved outside the purview of traditional advertising agencies. Two of the better efforts I've seen are Google's AdSense (simple, straightforward, highly relevant (most of the time anyway)) and small ad networks like The Deck (high quality, considered, relevant). For instance, here's The Deck's policy on accepting ads:
We're picky about the advertising we'll accept. We won't take an ad unless we have paid for and/or used the product or service. Sell us something relevant to our audience and we'll sell you an ad.
That's a pretty sweet deal for advertisers and readers alike. In the past, I've dismissed advertising without experiencing it from the perspective of the content provider. By giving The Deck a go on kottke.org, I hope to gain a better understanding of the issue and fulfill my desire to keep doing kottke.org as a (nearly) full-time endeavor.
Ironic Sans has an ongoing series of posts about animated Manhattan; that is, depictions of Manhattan in animated films and shows. So far he's covered The Simpsons, Family Guy, and Tom & Jerry.
Book blog starts Fibonacci poem fad, i.e. the writing of poems where the number of syllables in each line is dictated by the Fibonacci sequence. "Poets are very, very hungry for constraint right now."
Kevin Ray Underwood, suspected of killing 10-year-old Jamie Rose Bolin, wrote an entry on his blog the day after Bolin disappeared and the day before he was discovered and arrested. His Blogger profile is here: "If you were a cannibal, what would you wear to dinner?"
Update: Here's Underwood's Amazon wishlist.
Update: His MySpace page is "undergoing routine maintenance". Riiiight. (But a recent post survived.)
Update: Some speculation in the comments on Underwood's latest post that his interest in atheism and evolution was a contributing factor in the killing.
The World Heritage List consists of natural and man-made wonders from around the globe. Thirty-four of the sites are currently on the "in danger" list, in some cases because of a site's inclusion on the master list (and subsequent dramatic increase in tourism).
McGriddle Fan Fiction group on LiveJournal. "Keep it focused on breakfast products. I don't want to hear about any french fries." (thanks, thirteen) -dj
I can't tell if this is a joke on TBS's part or not, but this is an actual promo of theirs for The Lord of the Rings movies done in the style of alternate trailers like The Shining and Brokeback to the Future. "It sucks to be Frodo."
Update: Looks like they're having a bit of fun over at TBS...check out their other promos.
Trailer for The Fountain, Darren Aronofsky's (Pi, Requiem for a Dream) new film. Official site, interview with Aronofsky on the film, which was originally supposed to star Brad Pitt.
Five suggested Flickr tags. Merlin brings the funny. "Rows Of Seated White Men Typing At Conferences".
Slideshow of graphics submitted for New York magazine's High Priority feature, the production of which Michael Bierut says "is as close as the graphic design world gets to an Olympic event".
John Gruber on Apple's Boot Camp, which lets you install Windows XP on your Mac (in beta). "You now get to choose between a computer that can only run Windows or a computer that can run both Windows and Mac OS X."
The language of the Simpsons (beyond embiggens and cromulent). "You pressed YOU, meaning me. This is incorrect. You should have pressed ME, meaning you."
According to Wikipedia (which in turn references the Oxford English Dictionary on the matter), the etymology of the word honeymoon is unclear. The American Heritage Dictionary (via answers.com) suggests it's "perhaps from a comparison of the moon, which wanes as soon as it is full, to the affections of a newly married couple, which are most tender right after marriage", which doesn't sound all that positive. Returning to the Wikipedia entry, honeymoon may have been used in Babylonian times to describe the bride and groom consuming honey (in the form of mead, a beverage) before the next moon.
At any rate, I've just returned from mine, the most relaxing vacation I've ever had. For two weeks, we did without electricity, running fresh water, newpapers, showers (we substituted ocean swimming + saltwater baths), television, magazines, movies, computers, internet, email, mobile phones (except for two unavoidable calls out and periodic checking of voicemail to see if the cat was ok), and music (for the most part). It was so relaxing that we didn't even know that Daylight Saving Time was in effect until 2 full days after the fact and may not have found out until we got to the airport if Meg hadn't shown up a full hour late to her yoga class and everyone was, somewhat confusingly, just finishing up.
I read three books: one fascinating, one great, and one good. Ate lots of great Mexican food with zero instances of microbial confrontation. Found really good pizza in an odd place.
We made up names for the people we saw repeatedly on the beach at the small place we were staying. There were the Naked Hat People, Naked Yoga Guy -- you may be noticing a trend...the beach was clothing optional -- and Naked Paddleball Players, who we renamed Ketchup and Mustard because of their signature matching red and yellow ball caps (they exercised their option to wear nothing besides). Civilization kept threatening to creep into our media deprivation tank, as when we saw Ketchup and Mustard at dinner near the end of our stay, surfing the web on the wireless connection we had no idea that our hotel/resort had. They checked out the New Yorker site and then caught up on the Huffington Post. Meg turned to me and said, "if he brings up kottke.org, I'm going over there and introducing you."
"The hell you are. Are you trying to kill Vacation Jason?"
So yeah, I'm back and am eager to get back to kottke.org, even though getting my &%#$^#*%& email this morning completely killed Vacation Jason much sooner than I would have liked.
And not least, thanks to Greg Knauss, David Jacobs, and Anil Dash for keeping up with the remaindered links while I was gone. Good stuff, guys.
ps. For the curious, wedding pics here (taken by Eliot). Some pics of Mexico coming (somewhat) soon.
Launch party tonight (4/14) at Eyebeam for Yochai Benkler's new book, The Wealth of Networks. "His book shows why labor done outside the constraints of free markets and giant corporations can still have a huge impact on the economy and social relations. He argues that a 'third mode of production' offers the promise of a more free society, but only if we make the right collective decisions."
Over the past two weeks, David Jacobs, Anil Dash and I have attempted to reproduce (in some halting way) Jason Kottke, while the actual Jason Kottke was in rehab on his honeymoon. The attempt, on my part at least, has been an abject failure. Or haven't you noticed all the crappy links with "GK" at the end of them? Go-kart magazines? What the hell?
Like most of the disasters I've had a hand in, I've got a theory that both explains what happened and exonerates me. Ducking responsibility sounds better if you put on academic airs about it.
The theory: There are two kinds of bloggers, referential and experiential. Kottke is one. I, now two weeks too late in realizing this, am another.
The referential blogger uses the link as his fundamental unit of currency, building posts around ideas and experiences spawned elsewhere: Look at this. Referential bloggers are reporters, delivering pointers to and snippets of information, insight or entertainment happening out there, on the Intraweb. They can, and do, add their own information, insight and entertainment to the links they unearth -- extrapolations, juxtapositions, even lengthy and personal anecdotes -- but the outward direction of their focus remains their distinguishing feature.
The experiential blogger is inwardly directed, drawing entries from personal experience and opinion: How about this. They are storytellers (and/or bores), drawing whatever they have to offer from their own perspective. They can, and do, add links to supporting or explanatory information, even unique and undercited external sources. But their motivation, their impetus, comes from a desire to supply narrative, not reference it.
There's nothing here to imply that one type of blogger is better than the other. There are literally thousands -- OK, hundreds... OK, at least a dozen -- of both kinds that are valuable additions to the on-going conversation/food-fight/furry-cuddle that is the Internet. My point is that Jason Kottke is a very, very good referential blogger and I am a very, very bad one. And I'm sure I wouldn't have trouble finding a link that expresses this sentiment (many, many times over, with varying degrees of vehemence), but I'd rather say it from my own experience:
Welcome back, Jason. You've been missed. -- GK
Today is the 45th anniversary of manned space flight (at least using vehicles that humans built). It's also the 25th anniversary of the first Shuttle launch. -- GK
National Karting News, American's leading karting magazine since 1986. -- GK
Mark Jason Dominus on the invention of the equals sign, diacritical evolution and the benefits of original documents. -- GK
The Edge Case (part of a novel.) Five years ago, Jason asked me why I haven't written a novel. Two years ago, I decided to try and discovered that I hadn't learned anything in the interveaning time that should have changed my answer. -- GK
Luke Seemann's moving eulogy for his father. Fart jokes included. -- GK
Argentina on Two Steaks a Day. Maciej may very well have just ended my vegan career, if I ever get to Argentina. -dj
Steven Johnson on his new book, The Ghost Map: "I feel like it's the best thing I've done, by a fairly wide margin." Tags include: maps, London, public health, information design and "the power of dense cities to create solutions to problems that they themselves have brought about." I can't wait to see the bibliography. -dj
Khoi Vin unveils a fantastic new blogroll design in the footer of his blog. When I get a few free cycles I'm going to shamelessly rip it off for my reblog. -dj
According to Tufts researchers, white people act smarter when in mixed-race juries. "Traditional arguments in favor of diversity often focus on ethics, morality and constitutionality, I wanted to look at the observable effects of diversity on performance." -ad
Those infernal hidden iPod commands, for when you need to hard reset or put your iPod in disk mode. If that's not fun enough, see 50 Fun Things To Do With Your iPod. -ad
Jack Black loves playing Literati on Yahoo Games. "I play a lot of Literati -- it's like Internet Scrabble. It's called Literati, on Yahoo! Games. ... It's just like Scrabble, but it's timed, and I'm pretty bad-ass. It's hard to beat me." And it's the least-Web 2.0 thing on Yahoo. -ad
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, the influential 1981 David Byrne/Brian Eno collaboration, is being offered for remixing under a Creative Commons license, complete with original samples and multitracks. -ad
The New York Times Newsroom Navigator or "Cybertimes Navigator" is a start page Rich Meislin of the Times has made to collect web resources for reporters. The Blogs 101 page lists notable blogs in many categories. -ad
Roger Ebert's movie glossary lists hundreds of film tropes, many submitted by readers. -ad
Kids really seem to enjoy dancing to "Apache" (as recorded by The Shadows, the Bongo Band, and sampled by the Sugarhill Gang) and then uploading the video to YouTube. It's probably popular because of the "Viva Lost Wages" episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel Aire. -ad
Pitch by pitch reenactment of the 1986 World Series in RBI Baseball. Well, not quite the whole thing, just the bottom of the 10th inning of Game 6, which is all anyone remembers even though Game 7 was also thrilling. I can't imagine how much RBI playing it took to get this right. -dj
A new version of Jumpcut, which in addition to being my favorite clipboard manager also exemplifies minimal software design and implementation, is now available on sourceforge. -dj
Looks like Mark Pilgrim is blogging again. -dj
Jay Rosen on investigative reporting and the Plame leak: "Not only is Woodward not in the hunt, but he is slowly turning into the hunted." -dj
The Gospel of Judas. JESUS: "No, no, trust me. You're going to come out of this smelling like a rose." -- GK
Donald Trump is getting $1.5 million for an hour-long keynote speech at a Los Angeles real estate expo. Prediction: He will say nothing revelatory or interesting. Another prediction: The type of audience that attends real estate expos that headline Donald Trump won't notice. -- GK
First Responders Handbook of Humor (with a forward by Marlee Matlin). No, seriously. -- GK
Every date is a special date when I'm with you. -- GK
While most machinima tries to avoid the limitations of a game's engine to tell a story -- with cuts and odd angles and cut aways before lips stop matching words -- stunt videos (video) exploit the oddities of a world's physics to do things the designers never imagined. -- GK
Tons and tons and tons of fractals -- the best look almost Lovecraftian. None so disturbing as this, though. -- GK
Can't we all just get along? (Video.) If we were all Korean b-boys, the answer, apparently, is yes. -- GK
In an age when it seems impossible to be too cynical, the Devil's Dictionary X updates a classic to help you towards the "power of accurate observation." -- GK
How to Kill Yourself Deliciously, Part III: Hot Dogs in L.A. -- GK
Cabspotting is a real time visualization of taxi traffic in San Francisco. -dj
How to Write a Thank-You Note: "The thank-you is exclusively about thanking somebody for their kindness. While you may want more than anything to show them once and for all you amounted to something, this is not the forum." (via) -dj
Gorilla Book Cover Gallery: "Welcome to the ultimate in gorilla cover obsession!" (via snarkout) -dj
Gothamist has compiled a list of upcoming food and wine Events in the city. I'm sad I'll have to miss the Broadway Panhandler's knife sharpening benefit on April 8. -dj
Milk Bath is an impossibly cute photoset of a cat getting a Milk Bath. (via) -dj
The Reversible Destiny Lofts in Japan are built to keep you on your toes. "People, particularly old people, shouldn't relax and sit back to help them decline," architect Arakawa insists. "They should be in an environment that stimulates their senses and invigorates their lives... [The apartment] makes you alert and awakens instincts, so you'll live better, longer and even forever." Visitors often fall, but so far nobody has sued. jwz comments "See? Being perpetually irritated will make you ... immortal. " -dj
John McCain on the Daily Show. Jon Stewart: "I hope you're not going into crazy base world. Are you going into crazy base world?" McCain: "I'm afraid so." -dj
Mad Ape Den Web hit by URL-use and gab ads for sex and bet, bad ads no pen Mad Ape Den. Sad. -- GK
Tom Benjamin has written about clutch performance on his NHL Weblog. "Calling someone a clutch player is really damning him with faint praise. If he can elevate his game at critical moments, why doesn't he keep it elevated all the time? Isn't every save in some sense a key one? Is goofing up when the game is not on the line really any better than blowing it when the chips are down?" (thanks, succa) -dj
B-SCAN interview with Rebecca Blood. "Humans are hardwired to share information, for storytelling. This is how we survived on the savannah. This is how we still survive in our communities, at work -- and on the highway: by identifying patterns. By sharing information. First we did it around the night fire, then at the market, and then around the water cooler at work. Now we can do it online." (via) -dj
Big Up! Burning Spear has a blog. -dj
Superpatron is a blog for library lovers. (via) -dj
ESPN and Baseball Prospectus redefine clutch hitting (again). "Baseball is a game that is won by exploiting small advantages over the long haul. Certainly clutch hitting may exist in the classic sense of the term, but a lot of what we think of as clutch hitting may really be situational hitting. In some sense, the answer to the question of who the best clutch hitters are is that they're usually just the best hitters, period." -dj
"User-generated content" has been reduced from a cultural choice a site can make to a Web 2.0 business-plan bullet point. Derek's too dismissive of other sources of media -- the implication that it's inauthentic is too strong -- but Lord, deliver us from the monetization of our own goddamned words. -- GK (Copyright © 2006 Kottke Web Enterprises, Inc. Reproduction is prohibited by law.)
Hacking Mass is a a fantasy baseball game where the goal is to assemble the worst team of players possible. Playing time counts, so you can't just pick benchwarmers. -dj
Daniel Jalkut's Red Sweater Links is a worthy addition to your reading cycle. I noticed the same thing about Boot Camp that he did: "... it makes it easy to repartition your hard drive with files in place." The user friendly partition manager has been a holy grail open source project for quite some time, and it looks like Apple licked it. Is there an Ubuntu distribution for Intel Macs yet? -dj
The LA Times has an extraordinary series of articles (Parts 1, 2 and 3) on how the wounded are treated in Iraq. -- GK
Aaron Boodman just posted a Greasemonkey script that forwards an entire thread in gmail, something I've wanted forever. Aaron writes: "One thing that is interesting about this implementation is that you'll note it does not use the gmail content script at all. It dances on the DOM only." Aren't we all just dancing on the DOM at this point? -dj
"September 11 is an uncontested and quantifiable tragedy. Iraq is approaching similar dimensions." How long before U.S. troop deaths in Iraq pass September 11 deaths? A little less than a year. -- GK
Love City takes the computer game "out of the bedroom and into urban spaces." Players get points for forming a "menage a-trois" by being in the same place relative to game pieces in three different cities: Nottingham, Leicester and Derby. (via) -dj
Google Real Estate is the first good use of Google Base that I've seen. They could do a littler better on my search for an affordable two bedroom on the west side, but then again that apartment may simply not exist. (via) -dj
Starbucks is "co-presenting" the new movie Akeelah and the Bee, and will share in its profits. Starbucks shoppers will be offered free vocabulary and spelling lessons, Baristas were invited to advanced screenings and are encouraged to offer their own opinion about the movie, Akeelah branded Scrabble sets will be sold in-store, users of Starbucks' hotspot network will get access to clips from the film, and Starbucks wll also be selling the DVD when it becomes available. (via) -dj
Citysnake is a city-sized version of the Commodore-64/Nokia classic game. The playing area is the city grid, and inviduals take ownership of blocks or city streets. Citysnake was one of Rhizome's 2005 commissions. (via) -dj
There's a New trailer for Art School Confidential, directed by Terry Zwigoff and starring Sophia Myles and John Malkovich. I wonder when Bloggers will replace Art Students as the iconic losers of cinema. -dj
"Phoenix", the first in a new generation of "Scout" landers, will be going to Mars fall 2007. -dj
Only 53 of the city's 468 subway stations are wheelchair accessible. The MTA is spending $192,000,000 to make 15 more stations wheelchair accessible over the next 3 years. At that rate, the whole system could be modernized by 2090 at the bargain basement cost of $5,120,000,000. (via) -dj
Poetry reviews, if awesome, make you want to read more poetry. Poetry has always seemed less accessible to me than fiction, because I've have less "formal" training in it. For some reason people post more fiction reviews than poetry reviews, but I'd welcome more poetry in my life. -dj
This message should be posted soon after 01:02:03 4-5-6, a date we won't see for another thousand years. -dj
"Devil's Slide," a section of Route 1 in California, is splitting in half. As the rainiest spring ever continues, there's a growing fear that the entire cliff may disappear into the ocean. -dj
This grass armchair gets its shape from a cardboard frame. "It's a flatpack do it yourself kit consisting of a 14 piece corrugated cardboard frame and a package of grass seeds. It starts to grow after just 10 days." ... "First find the right spot, because once the armchair has grown you won't be able to move it!!" (via treehugger) -dj
It's not that the funnies aren't funny, it's that you don't have the the right person reading them to you. -- GK
Set-up. [Pause.] Punchline! -- GK
One Laptop Per Child project abandons hand crank in favor of a foot pedal attached to the AC adaptor. Negroponte also says Linux is too "fat" for the 500 MHz AMD processors they plan to use. -dj
Screw the Shake Shack, if you want burgers, you come to L.A. -- GK
Other political fluids: hot legislation, warm spit, and dried-- Never mind. -- GK
Get a load of the two great tits! Yes, it's only day three and already I'm in the gutter. -- GK
Google Updated their Map API Today. Leaner javascript downloads, no page view limits, and a 90 days heads-up on the presence of advertising on the map. -dj
One of Spirit's Wheels is Broken Beyond Repair, so NASA will have to guide the Rover away from terrain with loose soil. -dj
Caterina's Products of the First World is a wonderful collection of the best of Skymall's products. I like Gaston the Gothic Climber. If Skymall had the CNN graphic artists illustrate their catalog, the world would be a better place. -dj
The Victoria & Albert Museums's collection search is a fun way to waste an afternoon. Try searching for hinges, chairs or India. -dj
One Laptop Per Child project and Red Hat release their Software Developer Kit. Includes a laptop simulator (since the hardware doesn't exist yet), and a rich set of compatibility tools. -dj
Another big influence: Maggy Donea's "Touched". Even ten years on, this story still astonishes me -- a perfect model of writing for (not just on) the Web. -- GK
RICHH is dead, killed himself in December 2001. A USENET legend, from the days before the Web, his writing is amazing: Funny, smart, sweet, rude, and of course infamously obcene (NSFW). RICHH was a huge influence on me. God, what a shame. -- GK
I stumbled into an arcade this weekend for the first time in years, and it wasn't pretty: Lots of untranslated Japanese games, lots of Street Fighter clones (and lots of overlap between the two), only one game with a copyright date later than 2002, most much older than that. Might as well stay home. -- GK
Like any good father, I'm trying to pass my values along to my children -- simple moral truths like: DC is better than Marvel. It turns out, that battle has already been fought. Spoiler results. It's a sick, sad world we live in. -- GK
People are still getting AOL CDs. I got one recently, included in the box with a new printer, and A) it had Windows 3.1 installation instructions and B) the password was "GUSH-TEEN." Which pretty much sums up the reason for subscribing to AOL right there. -- GK
As part of kottke.org's efforts towards the multi-David utopia of Way New Journalism (Note: ghost site), we proudly bring you the kind of original reporting that could only come from the blogosphere: We didn't find out what happened to TV shows that air at 2:00am during the time change because we fell asleep again. Windows (XP Home) Task scheduler skips tasks set for 2:30, though, while Linux's (Fedora Core 3) default cron executes them immediately after the adjustment, at the new 3:00. Take that, MSM! -- GK
It's Daylight Saving Time time and early Sunday morning clocks should be moved forward, from 01:59:59 to 03:00:00. But what happens to all the television shows that start at 2:00? Or to computer tasks scheduled during the missing hour? Tomorrow: The Kottke Investigative Journalism Team reports. Blogs: Asking the questions those cowardly tratiors of the MSM consider far too stupid bother with. -- GK
TeeVeePedia. I administer the machine that TeeVee runs on, and my one job this year was to roll over to the April Fool's site at midnight. The rest of the staff wrote over 300 articles and my one job was to just throw a switch at a particular time. And so, of course, I fell asleep at about 10pm. I suck. -- GK
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