randomwalks/dj

The Captain of Design himself points us to the ski trail maps of James Nieuhues. Nieuhues is a prolific fellow...he's done paintings for most of the large ski resorts in the western US.

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on March 2, 2006 01:43 PM

Originally from lifeblog, on March 2, 2006 01:43 PM

"1) Managers are soul-sucking zombies. 2) Your co-workers are dumber than you think. 3) Simple is best. 4) The customer is always interesting. 5) Everything you may or may not know is temporary."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on March 2, 2006 01:43 PM

My favorite is Ingvar Kamprad's.
(via del.icio.us/linkblog)

Originally posted by Chris from Cynical-C Blog, on March 2, 2006 01:43 PM

My Dad writes in an email:

"If there's a place and an era I should remember, it is 1950s 'solidly working class London'. I was 17 in 1955 and these are photos of me at ages 16 and 17.

Memories of seeing Teddy Boys around are quite clear, but Teddy Girls, no - in fact I don't even remember the expression being used. It required a bit more cash than we had to dress in the 'drapes' with their velvet trimmed collars (only black was allowed!). I guess we thought of them as a different culture. They didn't do the things we enjoyed doing such as roller skating, riding motorcycles - even shooting magpies. In fact I don't remember them doing much of anything except strut around looking pretty. The few I came in contact with worked as store clerks.

The article is quite good. I have to agree with the mention of no teenagers. To us youngsters, there were adults who worked and kids who went to school. My first noticeable experience of teenagers as we know them today was when I arrived in Canada in 1959. I'm sure you remember me saying that many kids in the U.K. were leaving school and entering the workforce at 15 years of age."

So Dad, does this mean you didn't dance The Creep?!

Update: According to this site on teenage fasion history, Teddy Boys rejected their fathers' working class clothes, instead preferring the elegance of drapes, drainpipe trousers, brocade waistcoats, stiff shirts, shoestring ties and suede shoes.

"This fashion is thought to have really originated when 500 Jamaicans arrived in Tilbury in 1948 on board the ex troop ship 'Empire Windrush' in response to the UK's government plea to the Caribbean for workers. They wore Zoot suits and the Edwardian look is thought to have been an adaptation of the suit the Jamaicans were seen wearing about the East End towns... [T]he Teddy Boy outfit was not cheap to buy and when custom tailored usually cost up to £100 for one outfit. An ordinary mass produced drape suit cost approximately £20 and shoes £3. So sporting a new suit indicated to peers how well an individual was doing money wise. At this time a Teddy Boy would have earned between £5 and £12 a week."

And get this 1969 Hong Kong movie about Teddy Girls!

Originally posted by Anne from Space and Culture, on March 2, 2006 01:42 PM

"In the very early days of hypertext research, people worried a lot about hand-crafted links. How will we ever afford to put in all those links? We also worried about how we'd ever manage to afford to digitize stuff for the Web, not to mention paying people to create original Web pages. Overnight, we discovered that we'd got the sign wrong: people would pay for the privilege of making Web sites."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on March 2, 2006 01:42 PM

I started using del.icio.us this week.

Well, not really. I've had an account since summer '04, but I've never used it for much besides testing API features. Before hearing about Del.icio.us, I rolled my own database of text and URL snippets and experimented with various ways of pushing content in: via bookmarklets, e-mail, drag and drop to "hot" folders on my desktop, and so on. I have high personal inertia so this simple, personal database is still in use running my snippets feed.

However, Reblog 2.0 now supports Del-like posting bookmarklets, republishing items from RSS feeds, and plug-ins. I modified the snippets database to accept input directly from a Reblog plug-in, and activated Reblog's Delicious_Post plug-in as well. Now, the public output of my attention span can be seen in three different places:

1. Tecznotes snippets, with swanky looking posting activity chart. (RSS)
2. Del.icio.us migurski, with social view of links I find interesting and antihelpfully-truncated descriptions. I don't use tags, sorry. (RSS)
3. My Reblog, with attributions and OPML. This is technically the horse's mouth. (RSS, Atom)

This kind of link foraging and rebroadcasting is what Mike and I will be talking about next week at E-Tech. If you're there, please attend our wonderful session Thursday morning.

Originally from tecznotes , on March 2, 2006 01:42 PM

Since I started working for myself in the middle of last year, I've had to change my entire approach to how I approach and arrange my finances. I've fastidiously kept almost every receipt and missive from cable, mobile, credit card, student loan companies and anything that could remotely approach relevance come the Ides of April. Despite this, the pile of paper and impending math is intimidating, and I am constantly afraid of the mess that is my accounting "system." Since I do so much banking on-line, I'd been frustrated that my credit card companies couldn't offer me a spreadsheet of all my purchases, which would make all of this math much easier. I still get mail every week from American Express addressed to $$FIRST_NAME$$ $$LAST_NAME$$.

This week they offered $$FIRST_NAME$$ a "Year End Summary." Curious, I clicked through, and my dreams were answered. Here are all my purchases, not only in PDF, CSV or XLS, but broken down by category. I am floored! There's even an "interactive" version where you can re-categorize misfiled items, although it appears they did a great job. And they should, it's what they do!

Highs and Lows:

• $2000 in "travel" expenses, broken down into airfare, lodging, and other. "Other," the largest chunk, consists entirely of Subway and Amtrak fares. South By Southwest accommodations and three plane trips account for the balance. It would be nice if they could connect the name on the reservations, in two cases Adriana's, into the spreadsheet since I can't write off her tickets on my taxes.


• $1300 in restaurants - less than I would have guessed, but probably because it's so common to pay with cash in New York.


• $0 automobile related charge, account related charges and late fees.


• $[embarrassingly large number] in "Merchandise," the vast majority of which is mobile phone and server costs that I passed on to clients and co-workers. The rest is video games and books. Why did I make three trips to H&M in July? And Apple - wow. Just, wow. Five trips to Whole Foods: $474. Got to get that under control this year!

Originally from hello, typepad, on March 2, 2006 12:31 PM

Pruned has collected some lovely petri dish scenes full of fractal patterns.

Billions and billions of bacterial landscape architects pruning -- no less in environments poisoned with antibiotics -- other bacterial landscape architects, dead or alive, to form dazzling arabesque parterres. The self-organizing embroidery of organisms in constant Darwinian mode.

More here. See also ferrofluid.

Originally from kottke.org, on March 2, 2006 10:06 AM

Edward Tufte's new book, Beautiful Evidence, has finally gone to print and will be available in May 2006, but can be pre-ordered now. (thx, jim)

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on March 2, 2006 10:06 AM

Urs Fischer installation view, with Kenneth Anger's room visible in the background

James and I attended the press preview yesterday. I expect to write more, and put up some more photos, but I wanted to post some random initial impressions. Also, I can't use my catalog for reference yet since the cover fell off when I opened it and the pages haven't all been cut.

My first impression is that there are a lot more artists with whom I was unfamiliar, unlike the previous one. I'm pleased to see that, because I don't want the Biennial to show a lot of work that regular New York-based gallery-goers have already seen.

A number of works (such as those of Jutta Koether) were created in the spaces, with the curators indicating that the artists' responses to the Breuer building were an important part of this Biennial.

I was struck by the mention of the curators visiting Berlin to see works by young American artists. I worry very much about New York's ability to remain a cultural capital when it's so hard for artists to afford to live here. This week-old article from Crain's New York on the subject gives some statistics from a study by the Freelancers Union.

There is a great deal of political work in the show, which is fine by me, as well has heavily conceptual work. Joao Ribas has an interview on Artinfo with the curators in which they discuss the number of "anonymous" or "fictional" artists/collectives in the show. I would also say the spirit of Beuys is apparent in the show with works by Urs Fischer, JP Munro, and others.

One more observation: I found it odd that a number of works dealing with African-American issues and politics were all put together -- including works by Dawolu Jabari Anderson, Robert A. Pruitt, and Otabenga Jones & Associates. I didn't see a specific mention of a conscious choice to put these near (or next to) each other in any wall texts, but I can think of few other obvious groupings of work dealing with "identity politics" in the show.

Originally from bloggy, on March 2, 2006 08:46 AM

If you follow Jonathan Schwartz, you will have observed a little flurry around our offer of free-trial (and maybe free-for-keeps) T2000 servers. If you read the comments, it’s become apparent that our systems for supporting this kind of marketing promotion, uh, need some work. I’m really glad that Jonathan did this, because I know from bitter experience how bad we are at offering hardware freebies, and this will force us to fix it. Particularly right at the moment, it seems to me a no-brainer that scattering a few of our Opteron and Niagara boxes in the direction of some worthy OSS projects and startup companies would be about the most cost-effective marketing imaginable. On lots of occasions I’ve gone running excitedly to the product groups saying “Hey, it would be really great if we could get XXX a server to try out!” and the reaction is along the lines of “Well yeah, but how would we do that?” It turns out that when you’re a big public company, if you have a defined process in place for doing something, it’s easy and efficient, and if you don’t, you’re in SNAFU territory. Lots of other good stuff in those comments too, check them out. In particular, I happen to know that Wikipedia already has one of the free-trial T2000 boxes, and that’s a very interesting application, so we’re going to work with them see how fast we can make it run on that box. Sun is full of Wikipedia fans.

Originally from ongoing, on March 2, 2006 08:46 AM

Blood in the water:

Originally from Mr. Sun!, on March 2, 2006 08:45 AM

listening today in a groove. words were music and problems were music. an autistic child tells the best jokes i ever heard.

coincidentally, my supervisor pointed to a catalog of tiny instruments and said the agency would pay! my pick.

i wish there was more secular human service, but bizzarely, sometimes things work anyway.

pictured a miniature ornament i made last summer, out of focus hence color saturation, tied with silver thread to a rose-scented geranium.

vincent d' vincent d' vincent. my trinity.

Originally from serenalarogers, on March 2, 2006 08:45 AM

Although the new Apple MacBook Pro looks nearly identical to the company's existing 15-inch PowerBook, something radical is going on under the hood.

Originally from NYT > Technology, on March 2, 2006 08:44 AM

he talked about the game in today's podcast; I posted the MP3 clip  

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on March 2, 2006 08:44 AM

Originally from Wooster Collective, on March 2, 2006 08:44 AM

From a forthcoming Serge Gainsbourg tribute album I give you Cat Power & Karen Elson (jack white's missus) singing je t'aime bizarrely translated into english, a curiosity.
via Filles Sourires

Posted to music

Originally from Stunned, on March 2, 2006 08:39 AM

If you're in proximity to great produce in the Bay, know that we are currently envious.

Originally posted by beXn from beXnlog, on March 2, 2006 08:39 AM

Wow. First South Dakota, now Mississippi. All at once that rhetorical fear-mongering in the Planned Parenthood and NOW fundraising letters is starting to sound like cool, accurate assessment.

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket, on March 2, 2006 08:39 AM

Pic of Day 3.1: Kid watching Portable Video
Originally uploaded by triciawang.

Q Train, Brooklyn

Originally from Hi Tricia!, on March 2, 2006 08:38 AM

Sun Microsystems to partner with Architecture for Humanity to create a community conduit to generate and support innovative and sustainable global housing solution.

Originally from Archinect.com Feed, on March 2, 2006 08:35 AM

New York State's efforts to modernize its election system have fallen behind the rest of the nation, delayed by government gridlock.

Originally from NYT > Home Page, on March 2, 2006 08:34 AM

2005 was the biggest year yet for camera phones, those pocket-size precursors to the participatory panopticon and potential planetary protection tool (yes, I got a special deal on "p"s, why do you ask?). Market research group NPD reports:

In 2005, 45 percent of all mobile phones sold in the U.S. were camera phones, up from 26 percent in 2004. Asia followed a very similar trend. Western Europe had a higher incidence of camera phones at 64 percent, and Japan had a much greater adoption rate with more than 90 percent of all mobile phones sold with camera capabilities both in 2004 and 2005.

This tells us two things: we're on the verge of seeing a major blow-up between advocates of strict control over recordings of intellectual property and advocates of universal use of communication tools; and we're approaching a point where location-based information and communication systems relying on cameraphones will have a large enough base of potential users to really make a go of it.

(Via Picturephoning)

(Posted by Jamais Cascio in QuickChanges at 01:18 PM)

Originally from unmediated, on March 2, 2006 08:34 AM

"Americans know more about The Simpsons TV show than the US Constitution's First Amendment, an opinion poll says. ... About one in five thought the right to own a pet was one of the freedoms."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on March 2, 2006 08:33 AM

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color PURPLE and don't stop to notice it. - Alice Walker

Originally posted by Andrea from Andrea Harner, on March 2, 2006 08:08 AM

World Prison Population. (50KB PDF) by country, 2003. Though only 4% of the world’s population lived in the U.S. in 2003, the U.S. held 23% of the world’s prison population — more than any other nation.

Originally from Social Design Notes, on March 2, 2006 08:07 AM

Not a Toy. Adam’s posted a few images of an illustrated guide for children about the dangers of touching or playing around unexploded munitions. The illustrations cover free, blank softcover notebooks produced by US Army for distribution in Laos as part of the UNDP UXO program in the 1990’s.

Originally from Social Design Notes, on March 2, 2006 08:06 AM

Is it too easy for buildings to get certified as eco-friendly?. “Unlike other so-called green products... some green buildings are little more energy-efficient than traditional structures. Yet they manage to earn a coveted certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, a leading, private environmental organization.... At issue is the Green Building Council’s [LEED] checklist system that certifies projects as green. Some critics say the system gives too much weight to certain easy tasks, while giving the same weight to much more expensive ones.”

Originally from Social Design Notes, on March 2, 2006 08:06 AM