“You don’t stop the journey just because one of the donkeys died.”
—Some public radio show that I only heard for a few seconds before getting interrupted. Can’t find a reference to the quote (paraphrased here from memory). Triple word score and a hat-tip link to whoever finds both the show and the source/provenance of the quote.
January 2009
66 posts
“To be precise, I do love the clarity and brisk style with which Malcolm Gladwell serves up CEO-flavoured visionary bullshit.”
—Dean Allen. Who has clearly practiced being a smartass for at least 10,000 hours. Just like The Beatles. Also, Hush Puppies are popular because The Beatles played a lot in Hamburg. There’s supposedly a whole big study about it. Or, something.
“I am never concerned about finding myself in the minority.”
—Roger Ebert, disclosing the preferences, tics, and attitude he carries into every screening. Great stuff.
“Maybe, someday, inbox zero,
I’ll be more together.
Stretched by fewer thoughts that leave me.
Collecting everything, projects seem distant, so many actions.” —Tantek, who’s already the Cy Curnin of communication. Check out his CommunicationProtocols for thoughtful ideas on managing expectations and choosing the best channel for whatever you need to say.
I’ll be more together.
Stretched by fewer thoughts that leave me.
Collecting everything, projects seem distant, so many actions.” —Tantek, who’s already the Cy Curnin of communication. Check out his CommunicationProtocols for thoughtful ideas on managing expectations and choosing the best channel for whatever you need to say.
“If the universe was found to be finite or infinite, either discovery would be equally stupefying and impenetrable to me.”
—Christopher Hitchens (via mrgan)
Michael Bierut’s Notebooks
Design Observer: 26 Years, 85 Notebooks
Why a notebook link from the guy who’s over notebook pr0n? Easy. This is all about how Michael Bierut has used his 85 notebooks over the past 26 years.
The notebooks function like a security blanket for me. I can’t go into a meeting unless I have my current notebook in my hand, even if I never open it. Because I carry one everywhere, I tend to misplace them a lot. Losing one makes me frantic.
It’s a fascinating mini-memoir, told through almost three decades of lines in a go-to capture tool. To me, this is much more about habits, cognition, and memory than it is paper and cardboard.
Like most designers, I get asked a lot about my process. A lot of my ideas are so simple and dumb that a simple dumb drawing is all it takes to describe it. I probably did the drawing for the cover of Tibor Kalman’s monograph in a meeting. Picture on the front, stacked type on the spine: what if we did something like this? That’s how it came out. If a process is supposed to have steps, to reflect a method, that isn’t much of a process.
Heh. I disagree. Any process that stops feeling like a process has become an ideal process.
[via: Kottke: 26 years of notes]
“What we read on the web is shaped almost entirely by what our friends recommend to us or what other people have decided is popular. And because what’s popular is meanness, that almost all that we read – page after page of cynicism, meanness, ranting and rage.”
—Paul Carr [via: Big Contrarian]
On Thumbs, Stars, and Little Men
Robert Christgau: CG 70s: The Grades
I love Christgau’s original (pre-1990) explanation of how he grades the records that he reviews.
An A+ record is an organically conceived masterpiece that repays prolonged listening with new excitement and insight. It is unlikely to be marred by more than one merely ordinary cut.
An A is a great record both of whose sides offer enduring pleasure and surprise. You should own it.
An A- is a very good record. If one of its sides doesn’t provide intense and consistent satisfaction, then both include several cuts that do.
[… further explanations, then …]
A D+ is an appalling piece of pimpwork or a thoroughly botched token of sincerity.
It is impossible to understand why anyone would buy a D record.
It is impossible to understand why anyone would release a D- record.
It is impossible to understand why anyone would cut an E+ record.
E records are frequently cited as proof that there is no God.
An E- record is an organically conceived masterpiece that repays repeated listening with a sense of horror in the face of the void. It is unlikely to be marred by one listenable cut.
If every critic — ala Ebert, in his way — would disclose the yardstick by which he generates the “stars,” “thumbs,” or “Little Man” of his reviews, it would go a long way toward educating readers; as well as, I’d argue, potentially helping revive the increasingly one-star interest in professional arts criticism.
It’s not that people aren’t interested in hearing what anointed “experts” have to say about a given movie, CD, book, or what have you. And, it’s not even that the lumpenconsumertariat requires that everything be reduced to a pre-chewed paste about buying decisions.
But, disclosing the fahrenheit, celsius, or kelvin of a given reviewer’s mercury would make it much easier for readers to understand how closely a critic’s cognition maps to their own.
Because, by itself, a thumb is really just a decisive finger. And, by itself, a finger almost always benefits from a little extra context.
“No one leaves the cinema saying: I loved that character arc. They come out saying: I loved the swordfight, or the bit with the bloated cow, or whatever.”
—Frank Cottrell Boyce on “How to write a screenplay”
Gmail Now Available in Offline Mode →
blogoscoped.com
Just what it says on the tin. If you’ve been thinking about moving to Gmail full time, give it a throw.
NightShift 1.5 →
web.mac.com
“NightShift automatically downloads and updates WebKit, the Safari HTML rendering engine, to the latest nightly version.”
Play
Play
“Favorite John Updike memory: he wrote to complain when the Boston Globe pulled Spider-Man from the comics page. They put it back.”
—Dan Moren, on John Updike, who passed away today at the age of 76.
“A genius is the one most like himself.”
—Steve Lacy, quoting advice from Thelonious Monk [via pretty much everyone, including Neven and Sandwich]
“Afterwards, we came to refer to certain types of accomplishments as “black triangles.” These are important accomplishments that take a lot of effort to achieve, but upon completion you don’t have much to show for it – only that more work can now proceed.”
—Tales of the Rampant Coyote: The Black Triangle
[via: Kottke]
Stay Classy, Lifehacker
Merlin Mann Takes a Tour Through His Menu Bar
Wow. Nine internal/self links, a via to Mitch, but not a single attributing link to where Adam got my screencast from.
Pitiful.
Update 2009-01-30 10:58:35Got a very nice note today from Adam, apologizing for what he describes as an oversight in not linking to me. I believe him, and thank him for being a gentleman and a stand-up guy.
Also | stopdesign →
stopdesign.com
Man. Doug Bowman. This is a man who brings the pretty in everything he does.
