Salad Days

Watched Battle Royale again last night.

It held up to a second viewing. Mostly because of some pretty amazing scenes and dialog. Some of the images from that movie are incredibly surreal. My favorites are when there’s a slow pan across an overgrown landscape with two school kids dying like a campy version of the Hudson River School. Oh and the scene where this artwork is unveiled is actually one of the great film moments in history. (This isn’t the scene, just the music and some stills.)

I am reminded how extraordinarily difficult it is to make something purposefully bad that is also entertaining. Battle Royale 2 is an example of something that is purposefully bad that is, in fact, just bad. I can’t unwatch that one.

I’ve also been watching all of the original Aeon Flux episodes which are out on dvd. Those things are great. There’s so much interesting architecture in there. Which oddly reminded me of this architects work (stolen from Bryan). Pretty awesome.

Filed under: architecture, movies

Borg-anization

According to the bookshelf blog, the Adobe Bookstore in San Fran will organize it’s entire collection by color. (for a week)

Eric, as I recall, does something similar with his books. He adds a secondary category of size. This way you could ask for the “green book that’s this big”. If you’re a visual person who’s got a lot of design books, this system makes a lot of sense.

On the other hand, K organizes her books first by category: philosophy, fiction, poetry, art, then by date of original publication. Which, when you see them on the shelves, especially in the philosophy section, is really awesome. You begin to get a sense of who was thinking what when. And when you ask a question like “why didn’t Descartes think of this or that”, you realize that that book comes farther down the line.

I guess a little of the computer scientist in me has bubbled up. I think it’s because I’m spending a lot of time looking at data visualization techniques these days. Really great visualizations allow you to ask questions you not only didn’t have the answer to, you didn’t think of asking. Oh, and they look pretty too.

Anyway, my system of organization is a stack. The top of the stack are things I’m reading; the bottom of the stack are things I need to store.

That and the internet. A lot of what I own is digital. My coworkers described digital organization as having only two possibilities in the WIMPS (Windows Icons Mouse Pointer) model. Either you’re the type of person who organizes everything into folders. Or you have a desktop with everything on it. But in both modes people use the space of the screen to remember where things are. Trash bin’s always in the top left. My personal files are in the lower right. There’s a number of new systems which take advantage of spatial and bodily memory to organize things, but they haven’t hit the software I use yet. Which I why I need to write my own version of Google Reader. (Ahem, weekend project.)

Filed under: art, projects, technology

Hats Off

For George Carlin.

At one point I realized that much of the advice my father had given me when I was young was stolen from a George Carlin stand-up routine. It was one of the happier moments.

Filed under: art, culture

Long Pips

Got my new rubber from paddlepalace the other day and installed it last night.

The packaging design looks incredible. It makes me wonder what other sports graphics could be copied– bowling or darts maybe? In the same way that skateboarding and a particular set of graphic styles found it’s way into everywhere.

Side note: A few weeks ago I saw that Indiana Jones movie. Ughz. The only good part was this preview. Amazing. Fincher please don’t disappoint me. In a wierd bit a synchronicity: kottke also posts about the movie.

Filed under: art, personal

D-D-D-David Helfgott

I’ve had a dreamy weekend.

It was sunny here in Seattle, which doesn’t happen often. And although I’ve been living in this house for over a week, I haven’t really gotten a chance to explore Fremont (my neighborhood in Seattle).

Well, I did this weekend and it was freaking sweet. There’s a canal connecting Salmon Bay to Lake Union 3 blocks away where I can take Mattie swimming. We watched a tug pull a house boat into the city and were wierded out by some really aggro birds. (I’ll have to take some pictures… it’s Hitchcockian.) Along the canal is the Burke Gilman trail which has super running paths along the water.

In town, there’s a bunch of great bars, restuarants, and little shops. On Sundays there’s a market that takes over a street next to the canal.

And get this, 2 blocks away there’s a chocolate factory, that has free tours… with samples. A Chocolate Factory.

Anyway, today I feel like I won the golden ticket.

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Even though I was out-of-doors I spent a lot of time on my computer. (Nerd-ho). I played a bunch of chess. (I had been trying to quit- ha) I came across this great site which has videos of chessgames narrated by FIDE masters. It’s really amazing stuff to hear someone who knows how to play talk about what they were thinking. This video, in particular, was great. (It’s an hour long, so not for the faint of heart.) It wasn’t an amazing game by any means, but to hear explain their decisions and show the lines they considered relevant that didn’t make it into the game is really fascinating. At one point, the narrator, Dennis Monokroussos, describes the board as being still “in theory” and shows a Karpov game in the 90’s from the position (15:30). Amazing.

I’ve never really though of chess as a spectator sport, although I know in some countries/tournaments it is, but I’ve actually thought of it more as an annotated sport. And with digital tools and digital games becoming more the norm. I’d like to see more of these annotated events, but perhaps for content you wouldn’t ordinarily expect.

For example, I’m a big fan of facehunter, a “street fashion” blog. Think the Sartorialist, but for hipsters. Now that they’ve got a facehunter show, I can get my fix all the time. But it’s a tragedy that there’s not annotation or commentary that shows how they made their decisions (which aren’t random… look at the men’s pants on the facehunter blog).

A playback that included commentary on a shopping trip may seem like retail pr0n, but shopping is precisely one of those activities that has a hundred tiny decisions that, here and there, could be made explicit. Although, a call for annotation is not to say that we should be all academic about it, S,M,L,XL and Cathy Horyn (ty, Adrian) have done and are doing that just swimmingly.

Informal annotation and augmentation could be really helpful and even entertaining; for shopping online, the best we have right now is the rating, recommendation and reputation systems of ebay,amazon,etc; wouldn’t it be great if those systems could be read in a more narrative fashion?

Kanye’s blog is pretty much a shopping blog, informality check (He’s such a style monger that he’s even started “shopping” for women. Seriously, he’s a cultural force, but like P-Diddy before him– I’m not a fan.) But no narrative.

There’s thingsI’veboughtthatIlove, with Mindy Chockalingham of Dartmouth and The Office fame contributing. Some narrative, but not from experts and not really a good choose-your-own-adventure type story.

The closest thing I saw was on America’s Next Top model, where the models go look at Japanese street fashion, then have to paraphrase it with purchases at select businesses all around Tokyo.

I’m getting off topic. Time to sleep.

Filed under: fashion, personal, technology

Tempus Puget

This is the first post I’m writing from Microsoft’s Connector Bus. It’s a biofueled transportation system for MS employees and it’s awesome. Two blocks from my house, I hop on a wi-fi enabled bus which takes me
to work.

I’ve been really busy with mundane stuff, lately. Just moved into a new house and evenings are now filled with unpacking.

In the meantime, I’ve been trying (very unsuccessfully) to write a chapter for a new book coming out on Digital Design & Education. Neri Oxman is set to write a chapter, as well as Larry Sass and Kostas Terzidis at the GSD. My chapter is, of course, on Rhinoscripting. The book will be in Spanish, but I’m allowed to publish the material in English.

So as a rough draft of my chapter, I think I will do as a series of instructional blog posts on the rhinoscripting blog. I don’t use rhino as much anymore or teach it, which is a pity, since McNeel is based in Seattle. But I would like to unload what little I’ve learned about Rhinoscripting to people who might use it. I’m way behind on the new explicit history stuff, but that’s going to be awesome for scripters.

Filed under: projects, technology

The Bends

Watched The Diving Bell and Butterfly yesterday.

The movie, directly beautifully by Julian Schnabel, is based on a book of the same name. The book, a memoir, was written by Jean -Dominique Bauby. Jean suffered a stroke in his 40’s which left him completely paralyzed except for his left eyelid; his brain function and hearing remained, a condition known as “locked-in” syndrome. He painstakingly learned to communicate by blinking, and, one single letter at a time, wrote his memoirs.

To say the film is touching, might be an understatement. It is an incredibly moving story told in a simple and powerful way. And when the end of the movie comes, and the credits show huge hunks of glaciers melting and falling into the ocean– but in reverse, and you are piecing yourself whole as well– it is very difficult to keep a dry eye.

You should see this movie.

Filed under: movies