Although I did not like being a professor (the grading, the repetitiveness, the isolation stemming from the hours), this is why we teach. I think teaching, and teaching well, is very important, and this is why we do it. The Last Lecture.
I have, for years, been haunted by the dreaded "Victorian grammar rules", introduced to me as rules without reasons in school (one merely accepted, one did not even have the capacity to question back then, sadly), but eventually, as I began to realize the coolness of language and linguistics and all things such, they became things that made no sense.
From yesterday's NYT Bits blog:
But I think we have seen the power of open and flexible computing environments over closed and specialized systems.
I may have been introduced to bento back in high school (aka, "the eighties"), but I know we used to eat it when I was at Ziff-Davis out in the Bay area in 1992 (with font-man and Colin). Mimi Ito apparently makes a lot of bento -- every day for her kids! And she's posted a lot of beautiful bento photos at flickr. There's a large set of images and a smaller tagged group, they may overlap, not sure.
Via Kotaku, I discovered these.... things.... games... well they're unusual, somewhat grim, with no super clear win conditions. 2D, very short. But try them. They're different (oh they're like the Mac, that's why I like them, think different). They are all by designer Jason Rohrer, go check out his sourceforge page. Some of the ones I have seen are under Video Games, others under Game Design Sketchbook -- these ones are all at the Escapist, where you should, if you are interested in electronic games and don't mind possibly offensive things mixed with humor and usually negative game reviews, watch all episodes of Zero Punctuation, especially the Orange Box review since he actually likes, nay loves, Portal.
Run by some friends of mine, they have an awesome website! They do beautiful designs. They do "cabinetry, architectural design, furniture and custom millwork." Really, I've seen their stuff.
I think it is desirable that the artist and what is technically called the designer should practically be one...A designer ought to be able to weave himself. (William Morris, 1882)I don't even have a tag for this kind of post. Now what, my taxonomy is shot! Oh, interfaces! Design is an interface between ourselves and the object.
Hit up the farmer's market this morning. The smell of fresh produce is awesome! Hits the right spot in the brain (yes, evolution!).
Flowers: | More flowers: |
Blueberries: | Eggplants: |
Nectarines: | Currants: |
Rhubarb: | Orchids: |
Mushrooms: | Produce: |
Old school, when it was the Nantucket (the current Nantucket seems to have undergone some weird renovations but I couldn't Google-find notice of them).
Long live the 4th Amendment.
Given that technology changes but people don't, and given that we have Internet trolls, we probably had trolls before the Internets. We did. Tom Standage observes this in his A History of the World in Six Glasses, and this section will remind you of his The Victorian Internet.
News traveled fast across this coffee-powered network; according to one account published in the Spectator in 1712: "There was a fellow in town some years ago, who used to divert himself by telling a lye at Charing Cross in the morning at eight of the clock, and then following it through all parts of town until eight at night; at which time he came to a club of his friends, and diverted them with an account [of] what censure it had drawn at Will's in Covent Garden, how dangerous it was believed [to be?] at Child's and what inference they drew from it with relation to stocks at Jonathan's." (p. 154)
I don't always know how I come across these things, I'm just watching Anthony Bourdain (he blogs on occasion), who is awesome. Was surfing the Internets. Found a page which lists every Wianno Senior (that's a boat, local to the Cape and Islands) ever made. Some are still around. Some were broken up. Some are... missing? Since 1996? How can a boat go missing in 1995 or 1996? Weird. But a lot had burned in 2003. What had happened? The Internets told me! There is a bit more about it, such as this page which mentions a lot of other Wianno Senior material (such as our good people the Kennedys).
Nice little illustrated subway story, by an artist about his kids and the NYC subway, over at his NYTimes blogspace. Again I insist the blogs are the best thing there (not denigrating the rest of it, note).
