October 2009
89 posts
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HTML5 →
Both a fantastic resource on what’s new in HTML5 and a great example of what HTML5 can do. Love the typography.
PS: You can find that typeface here.
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Intermission →
Excuse the lack of updates for the last couple of days. Have been horribly busy & stressed out, so please enjoy the intermission and I will return to regular programming after the weekend.
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Cutting Off The Circulation →
If there’s one thing most of these papers have in common, it’s that they’re all in a state of decline. Or at the very least, going backwards:
Some surprising trends: the New York Post has the same circulation it had two decades ago! Also, the once-captivating battle of the New York City tabloids has become completely moot.
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Flying First Class, At Home →
Brilliant stuff — and the detail is amazing. This is an obsession I can endorse.
Mr. Toth has built a precise replica of a first-class cabin from a Pan Am World Airways 747 in the garage of his two-bedroom condo in Redondo Beach, Calif. The setup includes almost everything fliers in the late 1970s and 1980s would have found onboard: pairs of red-and-blue reclining seats, original overhead...
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In Sugar We Trust →
More from JSM:
WHEN I WAS GROWING UP, holidays offered early indications that communication design was in my future.
Determined to avoid disappointment on Christmas morning, I made what I wanted perfectly clear to both Santa Claus and my parents, constructing lists that were not only categorized and prioritized, but cross-referenced with several catalogs.
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Astounding →
So much depth you could fall in.
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The Unexamined Life →
“The unexamined life is not worth living”
— Socrates
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365 Days of Self Portraits →
A truly inspiring set, and something that takes a lot of guts & motivation — a self-portrait every day, for three-hundred-and-sixty-five days.
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Mini →
More film, more reason to treasure some things from the past.
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And They Said I Was Impractical →
So — I’m selling my car and buying a motorbike.
The arguments against them are many: they’re unsafe, motorists don’t see you, they’re impractical and outright dangerous in wet weather. I know, I tell them. But it doesn’t change my mind. There is something about motorbikes that has me disregarding the downsides and chasing after the idea of being a...
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Clotheslines →
And speaking of clotheslines — is it just me or does everybody have this urge to use the same color & type of pegs when hanging up their clothes?
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Tootsie Pops →
The fourth Candygram of the month at JSM:
Everyone had a right way. Consume the chocolate off the top and bottom of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups first, saving peanut butter for last. Chomp the ends off strawberry Twizzlers, crafting a straw perfect for drinking 1985-vintage Cherry Coke. But none was more contested in our neighborhood than how many licks it took to get to the center of a...
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The Big Picture: Saturn at Equinox →
An amazing set of photographs from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft:
Cassini continues to orbit Saturn, part of its extended Equinox Mission, funded through through September 2010. A proposal for a further extension is under consideration, one that would keep Cassini in orbit until 2017, ending with a spectacular series of orbits inside the rings followed by a suicide plunge into Saturn on Sept....
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Smarties →
Another fantastic piece on the candy-from-our-youth on JSM’s blog — thanks to Rob Giampietro:
And so here I am, writing a piece about Halloween candy, and the obvious conclusion to draw is that I’ll be dedicating this space to the tart, two-flavored Wonka treat that goes by that description. Would you be wrong? Yes.
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B&W →
Just sublime — the noise, grain and contrast in this gallery is amazing.
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You May Not Have Heard of Worcester, England →
… but you’ve probably heard of Worcestershire Sauce:
The story goes that Worcestershire sauce was created by accident: a customer came into Lea & Perrins’s apothecary, requested the condiment be prepared and then apparently never returned for it. A few years later, as the remains of the old mixture were about to be tossed from the storeroom, a daring clerk tasted it and — eureka!
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But Times Are Hard →
Clever in all kinds of different ways — and I must say, I want some of that card paper.
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Held By The Taliban: Part Four →
Part Four of David Rodhe’s recollections hits hard:
TWO deafening explosions shook the walls of the compound where the Taliban held us hostage. My guards and I dived to the floor as chunks of dirt hurtled through the window.
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Jackpot →
The second Jason Santa Maria candygram of the month — and this time by John Gruber of Daring Fireball fame:
It is 1980. My nose is sweating under the cheap plastic mask held to my face with a rubber band stretched across the back of my head. I am seven years old. Ding-dong. The door opens, and there’s nice Mrs. Stenavage. The house is lit by a slew of candles, and looks just as Halloweeny inside...
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Held By The Taliban: Part Three →
Part Three of David Rohde’s recollection:
A NERVOUS-LOOKING Pakistani soldier pointed a rocket-propelled grenade at our pickup truck in late January. The Taliban guard beside me loaded his rifle and ordered me to put a scarf over my face. A group of Pakistani civilians standing nearby moved out of the way, anticipating a firefight.
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120 millimetres →
Film astounds me enough as-is, but medium-format film even more so. This is such a fantastic example of how film still has its’ place in today’s world, and the reason why I hope film is still with us for a long while to come.
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Use a Bow! →
Another inspiring gallery on Flickr. For those of you who haven’t clicked as to what galleries are about — they’re a ‘feature’ that hit just over a month ago, designed to allow photographers to curate photographs they love around a central theme.
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Held By The Taliban: Part Two →
Part Two of David Rohde’s recollection on his kidnapping by a local Taliban group — and the seven months of captivity that followed.
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Buying Music →
How barbaric! And in this day and age when it’s well known to be free? But there really isn’t any reason not to — it’s not restricted to a particular manufacturer or device, it’s high-quality and you get album booklets and often more. I still hear arguments otherwise though — “the artists get so little of what you pay”, or “a physical CD is better” — but some dollars are...
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The Missing Person →
I’m not entirely sure what to think after watching the trailer — but one thing I know for sure is that this movie deserves my money after that one-minute-and-forty-four-seconds of delightful noir.
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Goop →
The negative side of Polaroid pack film (peel apart) with its goopy goodness
And to think they no longer make it.
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Held By The Taliban →
The first of a five-part series from David Rohde, the New York Times reporter who spent over seven months as a hostage of the Taliban. It’s a compelling read, and that David is able to re-tell it after an undoubtedly harrowing experience makes it more so. What makes this unique amongst hostage stories though is the ‘media blackout’ maintained throughout his time in captivity, apparently...
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Childhood Memories: The Chaser →
Part two of a series of memories from my childhood.
It wasn’t just a Chaser, it was The Chaser. Black and fluro-green with sixteen-inch wheels, it was my first bike. It even had training wheels to begin with. And I loved it more than any of my other material possessions, because I saw it as my ticket to freedom.
From the day I got it (a birthday present for my third birthday) I probably...
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Bathtubs →
Love this — it’s like watching a something out of child’s imagination.
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(From) Where The Wild Things Are →
A great gallery of behind-the-scenes pictures from the movie.
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Fair-ntastic →
Real tilt-shift this time — makes me want to be a kid again. Or just a juvenile adult.
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On Ampersands →
A detailed history on the ampersand — and what is ostensibly my favorite typographic character:
Though it feels like a modern appendix to our ancient alphabet, the ampersand is considerably older than many of the letters that we use today. By the time the letter W entered the Latin alphabet in the seventh century, ampersands had enjoyed six hundred years of continuous use; one appears in Pompeiian...
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Delicious Color →
Not groundbreaking, but the colors are astounding. Texture, depth-of-field and clarity. See the rest of this photographers’ set on Flickr.
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There Are Only Two People →
“There are only two people who can tell you the truth about yourself — an enemy who has lost his temper and a friend who loves you dearly.”
— Antisthenes
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The Swing Set →
It is not often I’ll link to the same photographer twice — but I’m willing to make the exception this time around. Proof that Photoshop has its’ place in photography.
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That Which Matter →
Tweets on spelling, grammar and anomalies of the English language — worth following.
COULD/COULDN’T CARE LESS? ”I couldn’t care less”=”I’m utterly uninterested.” Often shorter “I could care less” used to mean same. Sticklers outraged at shorter version (pop. in AmE); others see difference dissolving, perhaps caring less.
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Take Note, Google Wave →
It can be turned off, sure — but the whole concept of instantly sending what you’re typing to the other party just seems like such a novelty. Jens Alfke learnt this first-hand:
The same thing happened seven years ago with the live-typing feature that I implemented in iChat 1.0 (which was only supported for Bonjour chats.) I thought it was an awesome idea, and I’d wanted to have it in a chat...
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Five (Six) Rules →
I know I posted on Orwell before, but his straightforward approach to writing seems forgotten at times. There is something to be said about his simplicity — storytelling that isn’t complicated with too many adjectives or metaphors.
· Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. · Never use a long word where a short one will do. · If it is...
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Perspective →
Simple in concept, fantastic in execution.
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Orwellian Sincerity →
“For a creative writer possession of the ‘truth’ is less important than emotional sincerity.”
Read the linked article — it is a fantastic piece on not only Orwell’s literary techniques, but on his particularly unique world-view in general. This part resonated with me the most though:
“Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their...
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Where The Wild Things Are →
I suggest seeing the trailer first — and reading the book too, if you never did as a child — but I’m glad to see an author with the stones to stick to his story:
Reporter: “What do you say to parents who think the Wild Things film may be too scary?” Sendak: “I would tell them to go to hell. That’s a question I will not tolerate.” Reporter: “Because kids...
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Bokeh →
I love this. The sands and the tones and the sea, but most especially the heart-shaped bokeh.
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Because They Have to Say Something →
“Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.”
— Plato
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One Tree Squared →
This is just stunning — so much texture you could touch it. The rest of the set is similarly so.
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Criticism →
Citing Samuel Johnson, an author & literary critic:
All the other powers of literature are coy and haughty, they must be long courted, and at last are not always gained; but Criticism is a goddess easy of access and forward of advance, who will meet the slow, and encourage the timorous; the want of meaning she supplies with words, and the want of spirit she recompenses with malignity.
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Childhood Memories: Building Blocks →
Part one of a series of memories from my childhood.
I had a lot of Lego as a kid — two big boxes of it, boxes that I’d spend hours sifting through for just the right part to add to my latest masterpiece. I was six, maybe seven at the time, and I bored quickly of the instruction manuals. What I liked to make instead were things that wouldn’t fly into a thousand pieces if I dropped them...
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East River, NYC →
It’s hard not to be captured by the tones in this — and by the city it’s taken in. And seriously, how good is that film grain?
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AFACT vs. iiNet: Day Five →
Currently centring on AFACT’s decision to investigate certain ISP’s and their (seemingly forgotten) plans to co-operate with ISP’s back in 2007.
And as always, @AndrewColley & @LiamT are tweeting live from the courtroom.
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Write Things Down →
Take a notepad with you, or a journal, or a diary, or a stack of post-it notes. It doesn’t matter. But just write that idea down, pen that dream to paper, don’t let it escape or lose detail or disappear from your mind. Moments like those are too valuable to lose.
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An Education →
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to see this — but watch the trailer & judge for yourself.
Literature is full of cautionary tales of innocent young women seduced by smooth-talking rakes. Jenny, a dutiful student and a passionate consumer of modern novels and French pop records, has surely encountered more than a few such stories. But at 16 and in a terrible hurry, she seems...