The Internet is our archive. We are the archivists. Das Glasperlenspiel.
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"At times, it helps to think of writing as carpentry. That way, writers and editors can work from a plan and use tools stored on their workbench. You can borrow a writing tool at any time. And here's a secret: Unlike hammers, chisels, and rakes, writing tools never have to be returned. They can be cleaned, sharpened, and passed on."
Fifty Writing Tools - The workbench of Roy Peter Clark.
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Colour:
Color in Motion - An Animated and Interactive Experience of Color Communication and Color Symbolism.
Word Color - "A windows program that uses Google Image Search to determine the color of a word or string of words. It goes out there, retrieves the top 9 images and loops through all pixels, calculating the average hue, which is later converted to a color."
ColorCell - "An experimental website about colors. Colorcell wants to find the most popular color combinations;" genetic algorithms meet design.
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Digital Snapshot - "What does a moment look like? Can snapshots freeze a moment in time? ... [M]otion fragments were captured and rearranged in a new visual context via unconventional digital manipulations." This project explores the nature of time, context and motion.
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German style board games, like the Settlers of Catan, can be played online at the BrettspielWelt portal.
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Travel sketchbooks.
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My HD died with two days left on the warranty.
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"A skeuomorph is a design feature that is no longer functional in itself but that refers back to a feature that was functional at an earlier time. The dashboard of my Toyota Camry, for example, is covered by vinyl molded to simulate stitching" - N. Katherine Hayles
An Interconnected look at skeuomorphs.
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"Shaping a networked society is a design adventure. A public sphere in cyberspace will not emerge from technology itself. Rather, a public sphere must be designed. But design, in this case, is not only about the intentional design performed by professional and designated designers. To a large extent, the total cyberspace network, and even more so the part of it that can be seen as a 'public sphere', is designed through use. This paper is about that form of design."
Unintended Use: The Public Sphere Designed by the Public
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"This text proposes a series of definitions, the aim of which is to better circumscribe what is, and what is not, meant by writing under constraint."
Toward a General Theory of the Constraint
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"In the early 90s a group of people were attracted to each other because of their shared interest in the idea of time, and in the idea of responsibility for the future. This group of people came to call themselves the Long Now Foundation. [...] We felt that there was a need to create some new form of human thinking about Time. We were all aware that everything was getting faster."
Brian Eno talks about the Long Now Foundation. (Related: The Long Now Foundation)
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"Ever felt as though a piece of music is speaking to you? You could be right: musical notes are strung together in the same patterns as words in a piece of literature, according to an Argentinian physicist."
Tunes create context like language. (Related: Zipf's law and the creation of musical context, which discusses the extension of the notion of context from linguistics to the domain of music.)
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The Naropa University Beat Generation audio archives.
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Exactitudes, "an almost scientific, anthropological record of people's attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity".
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My hard-drive is dying. When I try to access certain files it goes: Clickclickclickclickclickclicklclick. Next, the computer freezes and I have to run scandisk to repair the bad sectors. MS Outlook went first. Messenger was second. Now explorer.exe is randomly clicking and crashing!
Luckily, the HD is under warranty. But what a pain in the arse: Remove HD -> Mail to IBM -> Wait -> Receive new HD -> Full Reinstall. Arg.
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Based on the feedback from my last post, I have tweaked my new blog template. Again, feedback is welcome.
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MadInkBeard is a blog dedicated to the idea of formal constraints in writing. (Via Languagehat. Related: Translation and the Oulipo - The Case of the Persevering Maltese)
The Wooster Collective has profiled the Winnipeg based graf collective, Two-sicks. I am regularly inspired by their work.
Want to read Ulysses? Why not read one page a day?
Social Design Notes on postering and preaching to the converted.
8-bit hip-hop.
Streetmemes tracks the propagation of graffiti memes.
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I've been working on a site redesign. I've also been putting together a design portfolio.
I need your help. Check out the new template I've been working on and let me know if it renders properly for you. The HTML and CSS are standards compliant, but you can never be too careful with CSS based designs.
If you're still rocking 8-bit colour, the text should render in black and white.
If your browser support alternate style sheets - like Foxfire - there are three sheets available; the default texture skinned template; a simplified colour template; and the 8-bit minimal colours template.
(Follow the head to view the template rendered with Firefox 0.8 in Windows 2000.)
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Winnipegforums.ca is live. McMayor even makes an appearance. We spent the evening postering around town.
(Side note: Postering was nearly made illegal (or highly restricted) in Toronto.)
So, if you live in Winnipeg and want to discuss politics, join Winnipegforums.ca.
Thanks to all who came out postering and to Open Door Press for the print services.
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David Chalmers has compiled a list of philosophical weblogs.
Notes and Observations on T. S. Eliot's Early Poems.
God Checker.
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The Chef is attempting to combat voter apathy [pdf] here in the Peg. I helped by designing these posters.
While searching for inspiration I stumbled across these poster sites:
Via Lorbus:
Of the world's 100 largest economic entities, 51 are now corporations and 49 are countries. Boo corporate power. Boo.
Twenty mp3 lectures available from The University of Minnesota for the course: Studies in Narrative: Science Fiction and Fantasy. (Via Beautiful Stuff)
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Are bloggers becoming instant pundits? (Related: Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit)
Today I received an email from an associate producer from the CBC. Someone must have googled their way to my post on Sleep Paralysis, while researching an upcoming feature for Nerve.
A snippet from the email:
"Right now I'm in the process of trying to put together a piece on sleep paralysis and I'm trying to locate people--in Canada and between 16-23--who have experienced sleep paralysis. I'm hoping they can talk about it on camera and shed some light on the experience for our viewers. Our show doesn't have a host and there are no producer voice-overs, meaning stories are told entirely by the people in the stories themselves.
I'm getting in touch with you because I'm hoping you might know of someone who fits this description or that you can point me in the direction of someone who can."
I replied to express my interest in participating, even though I exceed the age-range by 3 year.
If you fit the description, email me () and I will forward your info to the CBC.
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Similar correspondences have occurred in the past few months. Bill Werde from the New York Times and Douglas Wolk from the Village Voice contacted me during Grey Tuesday. I was also recently approached by The Museum of the National University of Colombia to be part of an online Processing exhibit.
If you blog it, they will come?
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While exploring the Nerve site, I came across a short movie on Purple City [quicktime]. I first heard about Purple City in grade 7. I made a visit soon after. That was over 13 years ago. The tradition continues; handed down verbally, bored teenager to bored teenager. Is Purple City unique to Winnipeg?
Also found on Nerve:
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Language tugs back.
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