randomwalks/dj

"By making publishing and dissemination of information faster and less expensive, computer technology has made it feasible to reach a smaller audience more effectively. It is no longer necessary to market for the lowest common denominator. There is already a growth in the birthrate of small circulation magazines and journals. Although this increases diversity and subsequently the chances of tailoring the product to the consumer, we can only hope that such abundance will not obliterate our choices by overwhelming us with options."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on January 26, 2008 6:19 PM

1,000 Lies. The Center for Public Integrity has compiled a database of Iraq-related speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony by the Bush administration in the two years following September 11, 2001. They found at least 935 false statements about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq — reaching a crescendo before the invasion. Their analysis and data set are searchable online.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Social Design Notes, on January 26, 2008 4:43 AM

My friend Stephanie has created an amazingly interesting and weird new project by opening a factory in Second Life! In an attempt to raise serious issues about the intersection of 3d web environments like Second Life and World of Warcraft and our real world economy, she's created the Double Happiness Jean factory, the first virtual sweatshop. It's a little hard to wrap your head around, but they are selling real world jeans (that you can wear) that are digitally printed onto a special fabric, but in order to have the jeans produced a number of people need to be "working" in Second Life. A half dozen people need to literally be simultaneously online and pressing buttons on virtual machines in order to make the virtual conveyor belt run, and for the jeans to be produced (printed out) in the real world.

These workers actually get paid in Lindens, the currency that is used in Second Life. They are paid 200 Lindens an hour, which is about 90 cents. Word is that this is good pay in the virtual world. People talk a lot about how Second Life and other virtual worlds allow for all kinds of experimentation that is difficult or impossible in real life. But can we seriously talk about something being different or alternative when the same exact capitalist social relations that exist in our first life are reproduced in Second Life? What does it mean that people who spend hours and hours in virtual worlds, I would assume in part to escape the problems, pressures or seeming limitations of their real lives, go to work in a virtual factory in order to be able to buy virtual clothes and code scripts to be able to perform virtual sex acts on other avatars?

I feel like I hear more and more about protests, strikes and other activist actions within Second Life, but I'm still unsure as to what they all add up to. There is an excitement and buzz around these things, it seems largely because they are new, but do they challenge any power in a real way? Are the virtual offices of a company a site where they are vulnerable? Is anything actually created there that can be stopped or blocked? Are companies dependent enough on their virtual presences that disrupting them has a real world effect? I guess I don't really know, but I'm very skeptical.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Just Seeds: Blog, on January 26, 2008 2:00 AM

A British novelist has been awarded legal damages in excess of £100,000 because she writes thrillers, not literary masterpieces. What's at fault?
She's been inhaling fumes from a nearby shoe factory.

The author "claimed to have become so intoxicated" by the fumes that "she was reduced to writing thrillers." Indeed, the fumes grew so intense "that she was unable to concentrate on writing her highbrow novel, Cool Wind from the Future, and instead wrote a brutal crime story, Bleedout, which she found easier."
That book went on to sell 10,000 copies.
So there are several unspoken arguments being put forward by her claim. Such as:

1) Literary judgement. Why is one "reduced" to writing crime thrillers? Perhaps Henning Mankell is more interesting than, say, Zadie Smith. This writer thinks so, at least. I.e. me. Perhaps the traumatized British author under discussion here should actually owe money to the shoe factory – a small percentage of her royalties, for instance – or at least an acknowledgment in the book.
2) Environmental causality. Perhaps BLDGBLOG is caused by the fact that I do not inhale fumes from a nearby shoe factory. Perhaps I find it difficult to concentrate on anything but architecture because of my city's aroma... I'd thought it'd been all the coffee.
3) Paranoia. Perhaps you, right now, are inhaling something that prevents you from writing your own Ulysses. Perhaps you are being held back by untraceable smells. Perhaps your life is being quietly reshaped by something you can neither see nor properly talk about, some vast and mysterious influencing machine that manipulates you from the outside. Perhaps that machine is a giant shoe factory.
4) Theft, unauthorized use of services, and/or copyright infringement. Perhaps this woman has been using the shoe factory's fumes without permission. Perhaps, Delphi-like, they have been wafting through the neighborhood for someone else's use, mesmerizing home scribblers into a state approaching hypergraphia. Perhaps there was another writer in the flat next door furiously pounding out thrillers and loving every minute of it. Perhaps this woman had no right to use the fumes in the first place – like taping a film whilst sitting at the cinema. Put the pen down, love. These fumes aren't for you. It's a form of neurochemical shoplifting.
5) Scapegoating. Perhaps you can't finish the novel you started writing last summer because of London. You don't live in London – in fact, you've never been there – but it's distracting you. It's forcing you to write emails to friends, instead. You haven't touched your novel in ages. You should sue London... Or perhaps all those buildings you see everyday are preventing you from being a good architecture critic. It's not your eye for detail – it's the buildings you're forced to write about. Perhaps the streets you take to work each day are not inspiring you to travel abroad and be interesting and do something fun with your life. Perhaps your coworker's cubicle makes you terrible at data entry. Perhaps nothing is your fault at all. Perhaps the color of Manhattan taxi cabs prevents you from writing good music. You're now homeless. You prepare to sue.
6) Aromatherapeutic innovation and/or the future of global perfume. In 2010, Burberry will release a new scent. It will smell like the fumes of British shoe factories. Within days of buying your first bottle you begin to convulse – and write thrillers...

So is your neighborhood causing you to write – or not write – highbrow novels? Can you prove it? Or do you only cook spaghetti because of the sad little street you live on – when, really, you're a gourmet chef...?
What is your city doing to you?

(Thanks, Steve T!)

Originally posted by Geoff Manaugh from BLDGBLOG, on January 26, 2008 1:18 AM

ThingM's first product, BlinkM is now for sale from Sparkfun. BlinkM is a smart LED. What's a smart LED? Well, on the one hand, it's the atomic unit of ubiquitous computing: an RGB LED and a CPU. Input, processing, networking, and output in one package. If technology worked like chemistry, it would be analogous to hydrogen; if it worked like biology, to algae. OK, maybe that overstates the point, but it's the simplest device that we could imagine that represents the essence of ubicomp, and it was the one we could, as a self-funded startup, afford to develop and manufacture relatively quickly (development started in November, though it's based on work we did with WineM). It's designed for hobbyists, designers and artists who want to add low-power colored light to their projects, but don't want to mess with pulsed width modulation or color theory. Give it an RGB number, or select a color from the color picker, and it glows that color; enter two colors, and it'll do a smooth fade between them. Want to simulate the breathing sleep light on a Mac computer but in purple, it'll do that. Take a look at the description for the full...

Originally posted by mikek from Orange Cone, on January 25, 2008 4:13 PM

In 1994, years before the Internet became the world's diary (or ashtray, depending on your point of view) that it is today, Heather Powazek Champ launched her first home page. Some form of addiction formed in her constant forays into self-publishing, and after some years the avid photographer found herself co-founding JPG Magazine, the Photoshop-restrictive publication loved well (if not equally) by purists and digital mavens alike. Today, along with running the magazine with her husband and fellow founder, Derek Powazek, Heather plays the role of Community Manager at Flickr, the hugely popular photo-sharing site.

We chatted with Heather about plastic cameras, digital vs. film photography, and the shortcomings of the iPhone, and learned a few things about ourselves — i.e., ‘The Perpetually Posting' — in the process.

Joshspear.com: What inspired you, initially, to start taking pictures?

Heather Powazek Champ: My parents. They were both inveterate shutterbugs. My sister and I found thousands upon thousands of slides when my father passed. My mother purchased an SX-70 when they were first introduced by Polaroid in the 70's. The sleet aluminum and metal camera became an object that I lusted and desired after.

JS: Do you have a favorite camera? If so, what is it, and what about it do you love so much?

HPC: Well, my cameras would tell you that I'm quite fickle. I tend to have year- long "affairs," and I'm currently very much enamoured with loading 35 mm film into a Holga. In all, I'm a fan of all things cheap and plastic. I do have a Leica M6 that I adore but am completely intimidated by.

JS: You still prefer (and will probably always prefer) film to digital photography. Why is this?

HPC: To my eye, there's something integral to photography that's not translating from film to digital. This isn't to say that I think that digital is crap, but there's definitely something missing.

I also think that a photographer's relationship with shooting is quite different when it's film and when it's digital. If I buy fresh Polaroid film for my pinhole camera, it's roughly $3.75 a shot. Shooting with an SX-70 is roughly $1 a shot. The choices that I make are an important and necessary part of my process.

With digital, you pretty much shoot ‘til your card's full. I guess, I miss the ongoing interior editorial conversation that happens in my head.

JS: If photography were to progress into a solely digital art form, what do you most fear might be lost?

HPC: Herm. A closer relationship with image making? That might sound a little poncy. Then again, with digital, it's cheaper (in the long run) and — as the cost of cameras fall — available for more people. It's hard to say. Digital is the natural progression of photography and hundreds of years of people endeavouring to capture a slice of the world around them.

JS: You have a very close relationship with blogging, both through your own tendencies and through your husband Derek — who was quite an early adopter as far as Internet communication goes. What does the Internet, as an art forum, mean to you?

HPC: I quickly became addicted to the sense of euphoria that I felt when I published my first home page back in 1994 — "I am Heather, hear me roar!" Granted, it was difficult then. You need to know some HTML and there weren't any books, but given the inherent templatization of blogging, it was more free. Don't get me wrong — I love the ease in which people can now share their voice (and millions of people are doing so daily). Something has been lost and as an art form, I think we've all become a little too complacent.

JS: How did you become involved with Flickr?

HPC: I was an early alpha tester, having created my account back in January 2004. In terms of joining the team, I pinged Caterina over IM to congratulate the team after the much rumoured and finally announced acquisition of Flickr by Yahoo! at TED in 2005. I blithely mentioned something like "please let me know if there's anything I can do..." and one thing led to another.

JS: What do you do there?

HPC: I'm the Community Manager — I can be a conduit back and forth between our members and the team. I also have days where I'm good cop or bad cop depending upon what's going on. There's an editorial aspect too, one that I very much enjoy in featuring some of the incredible work that our members share on FlickrBlog.

JS: In your own words, what has Flickr done for photography/photographers?

HPC: Flickr provided a collaborative space that has allowed so many to flourish, find their voice and share their view of the world. We've shared in the joy of the birth of a baby and the sorrow of the death of the loved one — the breadth of slices of life that our members have chosen to share is humbling.

It's sort of a flexible empty container of indeterminate shape. The members have very much crafted and are crafting an incredible variety of communities focused around so many different interests, conversations and explorations.

JS: In an interview you did with geeksugar.com, you claimed you were obsessed with your Treo… yet now one of your few methods of picture taking is with an iPhone. What won you over?

HPC: I don't know that I'm completely won over. I totally miss a dedicated qwerty keyboard. Wouldn't it be marvelous if someone developed one that you plugged into the dock at the bottom? That's most likely a heretical thought but I find myself sending our garbled text messages all the time ("are you drunk?" has come back on more that one occasion). That said, I think that the camera application is fantastic. The way in which you scroll through your albums, enlarge and reduce images is pure genius. Some aspects of the iPhone do feel a little "1.0" and I have high hopes for future versions.

JS: As both a writer and a photographer, what does the term "A picture's worth a thousand words" mean to you?

HPC: If this was a recorded conversation, this would be the part where I "erm" and "ahhhh" for an uncomfortably long period. How about.... some people are better with words, while others are better with images. I think that I fall mostly in the latter camp. "A picture's worth a thousand words" could be reminder that looking a little or a little deeper might bubble up more to the surface.

JS: What's next?

HPC: I'm on day 21 of a year-long project: Polaroid 366. Given that I haven't successfully made it through NaBloPoMo on both occasions that I've participated, it's a little daunting, but it seemed like a good way to celebrate a leap year.

Art, interviews, photography, speartalks, websites

Originally posted by Carmel Hagen from JoshSpear.com, on January 25, 2008 2:38 PM

WGA member "Chris" sends this anecdote. -JA

I have a nice story from the line that will warm the heart:

We're at the CBS TV City main gate today, and it's raining, with big, slappy drops. There's maybe a dozen of us braving it out for The Cause, but only a couple umbrellas, meaning most of us are getting soaked. (Someone asked, "What's more unappealing than an unemployed writer? An

Originally posted by John Aboud from United Hollywood, on January 25, 2008 2:00 PM

"reAnimator is a tool for visualizing how regular expression engines use finite-state automata to match regular regular expression patterns against text."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on January 25, 2008 1:29 PM

This morning I quickly put together an updated version of my resume and got great feedback on the changes but I also was told that I wrote that I've been in my current role since June of '08 so in the words of the person who told me, I am in fact working in the future which is very Web 3.0 even 4.0.

It is exhausting talking about one's career to strangers and afterward it often leaves me a little sad.  I go over possible mistakes,  I think of Voyager closing, the fact that I left Hearst too soon, Workman too soon, didn't start this or that. It opens a door to too many uses of the word "should have" and I find I need to be careful to shut that down.  It is what it is.  Would I do it differently possibly but then I might not have B and W waiting for me at home and I wouldn't trade that for anything.

I don't like being told I'm too senior for things or too junior for other things.

Putting it out there on Facebook has led to a few nice notes and leads.

Originally posted by joshua mack from DefinitiveInk, on January 25, 2008 12:22 PM

[Ths post was cross-posted over on the O’Reilly Network LAMP blog.]

Last night, the first stable version of Movable Type under a GPL license was released. You can download it from here.

Being a Perl coder and advocate of open source, the release of MTOS has great significance to me personally.

There is still a lot of work to be done in its transition, but progress has been steady.

With development of MT’s being mostly closed to date and Six Apart’s relentless focus on end-user user experience, the MT community has significant amount of designers, consultants and other professionals who use it to run their business and deliver solutions. What is now needed are experienced Perl coders to join the mtos-dev mailing list and start discussing how to improve the existing code, tap further into the collective experience found in CPAN, and in return, make what’s been developed for MT, an asset to the Perl community as a whole.

There definitely where some issues over the years in terms of code style and quality that are being addressed. It’s improved though there is still a long way to go.

Here are some links for getting involved:

• Contributing to MTOS
• Downloading MTOS
  • Subversion Repository
  • Nightlies
  • Stable Releases
• MTOS Mailing Lists
• The Movable Type Wiki

Originally posted by Timothy Appnel from Code / Appnel Solutions, on January 25, 2008 6:48 AM

Last week, we busted Target for blatantly mimicking one of Diane von Furstenberg's best known patterns (and on a wrap dress, for shame.)

Now, Business Week reports that Diane von Furstenberg herself is sueing Target for the copyright infringement, charging that Target's copies "nearly identically copy the scale, pattern and colorways of DVF's Spotted Frog Design," and that the shape of the copies are purposefully " 'wrap' dresses made of materials designed to look like silk jersey, a style consumers and the general public have come to associate with DVF."

We guess Target's designers don't have any friends at Forever 21. At least they could have given them the warning:

The inimitable DVF does not mess around.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on January 25, 2008 4:01 AM

A new poll of Massachusetts by SurveyUSA shows that the endorsements of Sen. John Kerry and Gov. Deval Patrick haven't helped Barack Obama very much in this Super Tuesday state. Hillary Clinton has a huge lead with 59% support, followed by Barack Obama at 22% and John Edwards with 11%.

On the Republican side, Mitt Romney enjoys a healthy lead in his home state: Romney 50%, McCain 29%, Huckabee 7%, Giuliani 6%, and Paul 3%.

Originally posted by Eric Kleefeld from TPM Election Central, on January 25, 2008 3:56 AM

The new Zogby poll in South Carolina shows Barack Obama continuing to hold a healthy lead over the rest of the field — and that John Edwards just might be sneaking up on Hillary Clinton for second place. Barack Obama leads with 38% support, followed by Clinton at 25%, and Edwards with 21%.

Some commentary from John Zogby: "The real movement here is by John Edwards, who is the only one who continues to gain ground in our three-day tracking poll ... Can he catch Clinton by Saturday’s vote, perhaps bumping her from a second-place finish? Perhaps that is why she has returned to the state to campaign."

Originally posted by Eric Kleefeld from TPM Election Central, on January 25, 2008 3:50 AM

Delta 7 Sports and Miōn Footwear partnered to power their booth at the Outdoor Retailer show with a mountain bike. Scott emailed me about it and we got a photo from Delta 7 Sports. Show attendees, employees, and anyone else they could find, attempted to pedal more than 3,000 watts of electricity per day

a couple notes

• Interbike! Maybe for a few turns of the pedals, booth attendees can escape the fact that they’re in Vegas — then be reminded on the fun-ride monorail.
• Perfect karmic task for the a-holes at Gizmodo — they should have to pedal power Motorolas booth at CES for their mean-spirited stunt.
• And we thought the bike blender was cool — you could have one of these pedal-power setups running a blogger lounge and recharging cell phones.

Admittedly, we lack Mountain Bike coverage here, but did notice the Arantix in the photo. It takes about 300 hours to build that IsoTruss structure with carbon fiber. And only 200 hundred are being built this year.

Originally posted by DL Byron from Bike Hugger, on January 25, 2008 3:13 AM

We've been reading more comics around here lately. For me, it started with an urgency to get that first book of the year under my belt. For Sol, I think it's that after months of reading way above his “grade level” (a phrase that doesn’t really apply to us, but is kind of a lazy way to get at the point), he’s naturally gravitating to some lighter stuff. And by lighter I mean Calvin and Hobbes,  Peanuts collections, and the Bone series. I’m familiar enough with comics to know that heavy on the pictures doesn’t necessarily mean light on the story. I just finished reading Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, and was really amazed by the power of its simplicity.

This is similar to how I feel when Luna shows me her drawings. She does page after page of renderings of the people in her life. They are most always just faces, but with such detail and such emotion that they almost speak to me. She has recently been concerned with capturing the lines in the brow—some faces have more lines than others, and the shape of the lines can change with fluctuations in facial expression. She pays close attention to this. I wonder about the stories she is creating about her life, about herself, in these pictures. What does she make of this world?

Speaking of comics, and specifically Peanuts collections, I appreciated the post, "My First Lesson in Being Black" on Aunt Jemima’s Revenge. Professor Tracey writes about her identification with Peppermint Patty as a kid, and the fact that it never occurred to her that the character was white, and therefore somehow different from her, until she was criticized for “fixing” Patty’s skin tone in a drawing.

This really spoke to me because my son has spent almost half his life identifying with a character that could only really look like him with the help of Photoshop. Actually it would be more accurate to say that Sol believes he is Link from the Legend of Zelda Nintendo game series. He doesn’t just play the game, he lives it. In fact, he has spent more time being Link than he has playing Link. There is something about a young boy fated to save  the world from evil forces that appeals to my young boy with a highly-attuned sense of justice. He’s a boy hero; a hero with a cool costume, a sword, and a shield.

So, what if the fair-skinned, blonde-haired, often-times-blue-eyed boy looks nothing like my bronze-toned, dark-haired, deeply-brown-eyed son? Does this even register for him? And if so, how does he feel about it? I haven’t figured out how to ask him these things without risking disrupting his play world. And maybe that’s the key: he’s playing, and as long as no one is telling him there is something wrong with the picture he is painting in his head, then it doesn’t matter what colors he chooses.

I have a friend who regularly shaded in the skin tone of the  princesses that adorned her daughter’s clothes, books, and even shoes during a particularly avid Disney Princesses phase. I can’t help wondering what Link would look like if I “fixed” him just a little. I also can't help wondering why Link doesn’t look a little more like his creator Shigeru Miyamoto? It wouldn’t solve all my problems if he did, but it might help a little.

This morning while I was perusing Goodreads, as I often do these days, Sol came up and began reading over my shoulder, as he often does these days, and exclaimed, “F. Scott Fitzgerald?!”

“Yeah,” I said. “You heard of him?”

“Well, his wife Zelda inspired the character 'Princess Zelda,'” he said.

“What?" I asked disbelievingly. "Are you sure? Is that true?”

“Of course it’s true. I read it on Wikipedia,” he said. “Anyway, why are you reading about the man that was married to the woman that inspired a character in my video game?”

“Well, first of all,” I said, “everything on Wikipedia is not necessarily true. And secondly, F. Scott Fitzgerald is pretty famous on his own. He wrote some really good books.”

“Mmm-hmm,” he said, eyeing me skeptically before walking away.

Originally posted by Lorraine from blueperiod., on January 24, 2008 8:17 PM

Hillary wins the big one, the endorsement of The New York Times:

The sense of possibility, of a generational shift, rouses Mr. Obama’s audiences and not just through rhetorical flourishes. He shows voters that he understands how much they hunger for a break with the Bush years, for leadership and vision and true bipartisanship. We hunger for that, too. But we need more specifics to go with his amorphous promise of a new governing majority, a clearer sense of how he would govern.

The potential upside of a great Obama presidency is enticing, but this country faces huge problems, and will no doubt be facing more that we can’t foresee. The next president needs to start immediately on challenges that will require concrete solutions, resolve, and the ability to make government work. Mrs. Clinton is more qualified, right now, to be president.

But how does the paper deal with Hillary's support for the invasion, which The Times opposed?

We opposed President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and we disagree with Mrs. Clinton’s vote for the resolution on the use of force. That’s not the issue now; it is how the war will be ended. Mrs. Clinton seems not only more aware than Mr. Obama of the consequences of withdrawal, but is already thinking through the diplomatic and military steps that will be required to contain Iraq’s chaos after American troops leave.

The paper's conclusion:

We know that she is capable of both uniting and leading. We saw her going town by town through New York in 2000, including places where Clinton-bashing was a popular sport. She won over skeptical voters and then delivered on her promises and handily won re-election in 2006.

Mrs. Clinton must now do the same job with a broad range of America’s voters. She will have to let Americans see her power to listen and lead, but she won’t be able to do it town by town.

When we endorsed Mrs. Clinton in 2006, we were certain she would continue to be a great senator, but since her higher ambitions were evident, we wondered if she could present herself as a leader to the nation.

Her ideas, her comeback in New Hampshire and strong showing in Nevada, her new openness to explaining herself and not just her programs, and her abiding, powerful intellect show she is fully capable of doing just that. She is the best choice for the Democratic Party as it tries to regain the White House.

Full endorsement here.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on January 24, 2008 4:06 PM

Filed under: Software, Productivity, Software Update, Leopard

DiskWarrior, my personal favorite disk repair utility (especially if the problem drive is the startup disk) has just been updated to Version 4.1. The new version is now fully compatible with Leopard (there were some issues with repairing disk permissions on a Leopard startup volume), so if you rely on DiskWarrior as an essential part of your Mac Toolkit arsenal (as I do), you can rest easy.

Alsoft has also introduced some additional Leopard specific repair features in DiskWarrior 4.1. What has me the most excited is the ability to repair directory hard links. Hard-linking is a key part of how Time Machine creates back-ups. How the process works is complicated (although this article does a very good job of trying to explain the whole process), but it is a vital part of Apple's back-up system. The ability to repair directory hard links means that DiskWarrior 4.1 should be able to at least attempt to repair a Time Machine volume. That has actually been my only concern about Time Machine -- what happens if that volume become corrupted or wonky? I hope I don't find out first-hand, but I'm glad some options exist.

Current users will soon be able to download an update CD directly from Alsoft's website that will create a new DiskWarrior startup disc (in the event that the drive needing repair is the startup volume and you don't have access to another Mac). However, please note that the update will only startup the same set of Macs as your current CD. So if your current CD will only boot up to June 2007 MacBook Pros, the update CD will not allow that disc to be used with a November 2007 MacBook.

One other caveat, if you want to run DiskWarrior 4.1 from a version of OS X other than Leopard (say, Tiger), two features will not work. You will not be able to repair permissions of a OS X 10.5 startup disk and you will not be able to rebuild a FileVault created under OS X 10.5. So if you need to repair a Leopard volume, it is best to either run the startup CD or access the drive from a computer that is also running Leopard.

[via MacTech]

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Originally posted by Christina Warren from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on January 24, 2008 4:00 PM

Say THAT ten times fast. Rolls right off the tongue. Anyhoo…

You spoiled rich kids who’ve already upgraded to Leopard can give your Mac’s seemingly-useless Color Picker a little extra zazz with Mondrianum, a plugin that pumps Adobe’s Kuler into CP:

Lithoglyph’s Mondrianum is a powerful plug-in that enables Mac applications to leverage the resources of the kuler community. Once installed, Mondrianum acts like a built-in, system-wide color picker, available in any Mac application that supports this feature of Mac OS X. Apple’s own iWork™ and iLife® suites, Google Sketchup™, and renowned applications like Coda, CSSEdit, and many more, all work well with Mondrianum.

And, no, it doesn’t work in 10.4. I tried. Wahh!

Originally posted by Luc from Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog, on January 24, 2008 3:34 PM

Brandon Walkin:

Apple has released their updated HIG with well thought out Leopard specific information such as making 512px icons, system provided images, transparent panels, and window-frame controls.

I haven’t perused the whole thing yet, but so far I agree with Walkin that it’s a good update, finally codifying some design patterns and control styles that have been implicit standards for years.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on January 24, 2008 1:48 PM

I have to say that Michel Gondry is my favorite filmmaker of the moment. Right now I'm thinking why haven't I been invited to any screening of his newest Be Kind Rewind. Apparently someone at Adage has seen it and written about it:

"In the film, Jerry (Jack Black), through a series of unlikely events, comes to be magnetized and accidentally erases all of the movies in the quiet video store where his pal Mike (Mos Def) works. Compelled to make the show go on for a beloved regular customer (Mia Farrow), the boys re-create and reshoot the movies she rents by whatever lo-fi means they can. That premise has Black and Def using a cheap camera, cardboard and neighbors to remake such films as 'Boyz n the Hood,' 'Driving Miss Daisy' and 'Ghostbusters.'

How can you not love that. Another big fan of Gondry is Jeffrey Deitch who is coming through once again with an exhibition by Gondry as he did when The Science of Sleep came out. This time Gondry will be recreating the video store (photo above) in the gallery, complete with a variety of movie sets where visitors can make their own renditions of movies.The videos will then be sold in the store. Quite a concept! There's also an incredible website bekindmovie.com with all kinds of fun interactivity. There's also this funny video which makes fun of Gondry.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on January 24, 2008 1:24 PM

Everything you ever wanted to know (and probably more) about regional pizza styles.

Originally posted by Alaina Browne from A Full Belly, on January 24, 2008 1:07 PM

Three cheers for Fantagraphics Books’ redesigned website!

The Seattle comic publisher is offering a slew of new online features, including membership registration, a revamped blog, event listings, artist bios, integration with their Twitter and Flickr accounts, a wide selection of RSS feeds, avatars and some really cool desktop & mobile wallpapers.

(via Laughing Squid from whom I basically copied and pasted the above info).

Also of interest:
Willie & Joe, by Bill Mauldin
The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora
John Cuneo’s nEuROTIC

Originally posted by Matt from Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog, on January 24, 2008 12:47 PM

The eight-and-a-half foot long, 1,800 pound smart fortwo has arrived in the US, with the first American owner taking delivery here in New York. As it happens, he's a friend of the folks at car blog Jalopnik, who took it for a drive. Here's some of what they had to say.

We do need to change the way we think about the Smart. It is safe. Bookended by crumple zones, a steel roll cage surrounds the occupants.

It feels safe, too. The size defines the driving experience, but not in the way you might expect. Rather than feeling intimidated in traffic, you feel empowered. Gone is the need to take responsibility for an acre of SUV on a crowded road. Present is the freedom to move down that crowded road as you see fit. Congested urban streets and crowded highways stop feeling claustrophobic and start feeling easy.

It's not Green. The problem is, the Smart isn't that smart. The 1-liter, 70bhp engine has to work hard, so it only averages about 38mpg. Less if you drive fast.

So the Smart is a more complete, practical car than most people assume it to be - but that's also its biggest problem. It'll still get caught in traffic jams. Look at the Smart as a practical car that's easier to use in an urban environment than anything else, and you'll be happy. Look at it as fundamentally altering the way Americans think about transportation though, and you'll be disappointed. 

Photo: Jalopnik

Originally posted by Brad Aaron from Streetsblog, on January 24, 2008 11:44 AM

Photograph of a Smart Car perpendicularly parked from Jalopnik

We've been following the progress of the Smart Car's U.S. introduction for a while and last month it was reported that they would be making their way to NYC this month. Jalopnik took a ride in the first Smart Car and has photographs of the 8.8' by 5.1' car in some super scenic NYC spots.

Jalopnik's Wes Siler wrote, "Congested urban streets and crowded highways stop feeling claustrophobic and start feeling easy. It's quick to turn, yet feels more stable than most vehicles twice its size." He's quick to point out that it's not an electric or a hybrid car, but for a vehicle, it's "easier to use in an urban environment than anything else." Too bad parking perpendicularly is illegal!

Speaking of parking, Streetsblog has an interesting comment from a parking workshop held in Queens - some people spoke of the "right" to own a car because they live in Queens, far away from "the Manhattan urban core."

Originally posted by Jen Chung from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on January 24, 2008 11:28 AM

New feature alert! Every once in a while we’re going to just mention a blog we like, that we think you’d get something out of reading. We’re going out on a limb by calling this section “blogs you should be reading”. And we’re gonna leave it at that, ’cause, well…’cause we think you should leave here for a little while and experience these blogs firsthand, and see why we’re kvelling! First up, Anything Wine authored by John Witherspoon whose topics include…well…anything wine related. Now, leave already (but please come visit us again soon or we’ll be very, very sad)!

Originally posted by d547 from domaine547, on January 24, 2008 10:17 AM

The American southwest: home to some of the world's finest foods, four -- count 'em, four -- corners, and the biggest dreams of solar geeks and "well-meaning scientists," according to Scientific American:

The U.S. is lucky to be endowed with a vast resource; at least 250,000 square miles of land in the Southwest alone are suitable for constructing solar power plants, and that land receives more than 4,500 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) of solar radiation a year. Converting only 2.5 percent of that radiation into electricity would match the nation's total energy consumption in 2006.

SciAm outlines -- in some depth -- a big, geeky plan for providing nearly 70 percent of the U.S.'s electricity by 2050. It costs an awful lot of money, and it's not quite as sexy as, say, something that spews pollution out of its backside at 100 mph -- I've been saying for a long time that an electric car has to win a NASCAR race for renewable energy to be taken seriously -- but it's evidently quite possible quite soon.

 

The story addresses land needs, environmental concerns, and financial and technological obstacles. It's not even just photovoltaic cells, baby. They get into steam, power storage, molten salt (!), and nationwide distribution. One point they seem to have missed, though, is that nobody's gonna pretend to think there are WMDs on the sun. So there's that advantage, too.

Originally posted by Dave Burdick from EcoGeek.org, ReBlogged by Leah Gauthier on Jan 24, 2008 at 11:44 AM

Originally posted by Dave Burdick from Eyebeam reBlog, on January 24, 2008 6:44 AM

Next door to Aix Restaurant on Broadway between 87th and 88th, there's a new Starbucks set to open. Historical fun fact! This Starbucks replaces the city's first Starbucks, which opened at 2373 Broadway (at 87th Street), but closed about two years ago to be replaced by a North Fork Bank. [Racked]

Originally posted by Lockhart from Eater, on January 24, 2008 6:04 AM

I'm obsessing over this Japanese stovetop pizza oven that looks like it would replicate the ideal baking conditions of a traditional Italian pizza oven. I say "looks like" because, honestly, could this thing really work? I have my doubts. Not to mention that the pies that come out look incredibly small.

http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2008/01/japanese-stovetop-pizza-oven.html

Send to a friend

Originally posted by Adam Kuban from david’s Neighbors, on January 24, 2008 5:48 AM

This morning we announced our new partnership with the Washington Post: our buzzmaps for the DC area are now live on the Post site. As you'll see, these maps are variations of the buzzmaps we've created for all the bloggers in our system: they're tracking all the places that local bloggers are discussing in the DC area, and mapping the top ten places based on overall volume over the past week. But of course it's not just about the map; there are links to all stories from the blogosphere about each place, along with links to the place pages themselves at outside.in.

One thing that's important to note: we're also tracking Washington Post content as well. (If the Post has an article about a place in the top ten, you'll see an orange slice in that placemarker on the map.) So in this relatively simple page, a number of cool and interrelated things are happening:

First, we're strengthening the ties between the local bloggers and the Washington Post. (Our investor Fred Wilson talks about this a little today on his blog.) The Post gets a easy way of integrating blog content onto its pages, and the  blogs get traffic from -- and the fun of appearing on -- the Washington Post's pages.

Secondly, we're not just geographically organizing the blogger content -- we're organizing the Post's content. That's because our system is designed to track geographically pretty much anything that outputs a feed. So building a map like this for another newspaper, in another city, takes us about five minutes. (You can see where we are heading with this.)

Thirdly, it's an extremely distributed system. We're not just creating a page that shows you information about a neighborhood (though of course we do that at outside.in.) We're connecting stories from dozens of bloggers, from a newspaper site, from our own  database of places in the DC area, and from Google's map API -- and we're putting it up on someone else's site, not our own.

The other thing that's exciting about this deal -- and I hope it's just the beginning -- is that we're working with the Washington Post, which is not only one of the top newspapers in the country, but also a true leader in their local coverage online. (Their local explorer maps, for instance, are very cool.) So congrats to the team at outside.in and at The Post for making it happen!

Originally posted by stevenberlinjohnson from stevenberlinjohnson.com, on January 24, 2008 5:36 AM

A video and accompanying text from Edward Tufte on Interface Design and the iPhone.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on January 24, 2008 5:03 AM

Yep, another day, another Mac OS X 10.5.2 seed for developers. Considering the signs though, an official release may be right around the corner.

Read More...

Originally posted by dchartier@arstechnica.com (David Chartier) from Infinite Loop, on January 24, 2008 4:13 AM

I feel like this happens to a lot of authors...the covers of their books end up being the opposite of what they should be.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on January 24, 2008 4:00 AM

CHI, a module I've been working on for a few months, has made it to CPAN:    file: $CPAN/authors/id/J/JS/JSWARTZ/CHI-0.03.tar.gz   size: 62313 bytes    md5: ec828f2466ba266e11cd6d1dd5ca2913 CHI provides a unified caching API, designed to assist a developer in persisting data for a specified period of time. It is intended as an evolution of DeWitt Clinton's Cache::Cache package, adhering to the basic Cache API but adding new features and addressing limitations in the Cache::Cache implementation. You might think of it as a fledgling "DBI for caching". Driver classes already exist for in-process memory, plain files, memory mapped files and memcached. Other drivers such as BerkeleyDB and DBI will be coming soon. Fortunately, implementing drivers is fairly easy, on the order of creating a TIE interface to your data store. Special thanks to the Hearst Digital Media group, where CHI was first designed and developed, for blessing the open source release of this code. There's lots more in store for this module, so stay tuned! Feedback welcome here or on the Perl cache mailing list.

Read more of this story at use Perl.

Originally posted by jonswar (posted by brian_d_foy) from use Perl, on January 24, 2008 1:47 AM

Adrian's baby EveryBlock launched today, offering locative neighborhood information for San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. They include things like alcohol permits, restaurant inspection reports, craigslist missed connections, filming permits, police and fire activity. No SF crime yet, but that's something we may be able to help with.

I love a site that has the gumption to roll their own maps:

A challenge for EveryBlock: make a write API for other towns.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from tecznotes, on January 23, 2008 4:16 PM