Something Changed

Goodbye Paris! All my photos: Left Bank | Right Bank | The Seine...

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:17:11 +1000

Goodbye Paris! All my photos: Left Bank | Right Bank | The Seine | Michael Jackson Tribute | London Sidetrip

Tonight was my last night in Paris!

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:58:39 +1000

Tonight was my last night in Paris!

“Book cover designer extraordinaire Chip Kidd lists his...

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:22:07 +1000

“Book cover designer extraordinaire Chip Kidd lists his favorite covers over at Newsweek, and points out how the name of Joan Didion’s late husband was subtly highlighted on the cover of her 2005 memoir. I can’t believe I never noticed that!” via thebronzemedal

East London, a strange circuitous double decker bus journey,...

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:02:00 +1000

East London, a strange circuitous double decker bus journey, Camden, the canal, Regent’s Park and London Zoo, Notting Hill, The City, brunch with Miss Jean Hannah Edelstein, haircut at Taylor Taylor, Tom Stoppard’s amazing Arcadia at the Duke of York’s, sunset from Southwark Bridge, back to Paris on the Eurostar! All my photos from my minitrip to London are here.

Spotted in East London: Vandals found vandalising this vandalism...

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:45:47 +1000

Spotted in East London: Vandals found vandalising this vandalism will be prosecuted.

"London is enchanting. I step out upon a tawny coloured magic carpet, it seems, & get carried..."

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:33:40 +1000

““London is enchanting. I step out upon a tawny coloured magic carpet, it seems, & get carried into beauty without raising a finger.””

- Virginia Woolf (via cowgirlblues) (via literarypiano)

"… as we think about creating public spaces, what’s the meeting point for our..."

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:53:14 +1000

“… as we think about creating public spaces, what’s the meeting point for our conversations? Is it MySpace or Facebook? Twitter or IRC? What you choose matters. Where you and your colleagues hang out matters. The “voices” of the Internet that you get are biased by the people who are in the places that you hang out. But do you know this? Do you account for it? Are you working to represent all people or just the people that you can see and hear? When you’re trying to reach out to people, are you trying to reach out to all people or just the people in the environments that you understand? Are you embracing difference or are you only taking into account that with which you are comfortable?”

- “The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online,” Danah Boyd

"It wasn’t just anyone who left MySpace to go to Facebook. In fact, if we want to get to the..."

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:50:57 +1000

“It wasn’t just anyone who left MySpace to go to Facebook. In fact, if we want to get to the crux of what unfolded, we might as well face an uncomfortable reality… What happened was modern day “white flight.” Whites were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. The educated were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those from wealthier backgrounds were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those from the suburbs were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those who deserted MySpace did so by “choice” but their decision to do so was wrapped up in their connections to others, in their belief that a more peaceful, quiet, less-public space would be more idyllic. This dynamic was furthered by the press, an institution that stems from privilege and tends to reflect the lives of a more privileged class of people. They narrated MySpace as the dangerous underbelly of the Internet while Facebook was the utopian savior. And here we get back to Kat’s point: MySpace has become the “ghetto” of the digital landscape.”

- “The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online,” Danah Boyd

Guess who went to the London Zoo yesterday!

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:53:07 +1000

Guess who went to the London Zoo yesterday!

"in the midst of remarkable and unprecedented change, in the midst of the greatest stories to happen..."

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:52:53 +1000

“in the midst of remarkable and unprecedented change, in the midst of the greatest stories to happen all century, we are paralyzed by some changes in the delivery system. Well, we do know, as McLuhan taught us, it is not just the delivery system; paper itself is a kind of message; it tells us that information is permanent, whereas the Net tells us that information is in motion. So the print journalism curriculum may have taught, incorrectly — because it is taught by ox-cart drivers — that information is permanent, not that it is in motion, and you may well be struggling to throw off that teaching, as perhaps you must if you are to tweet your way to victory. We must ask: If information is in motion, does that make it more or less true? That depends on whether you believe the world is in motion. Obviously the world is in motion. So information must be in motion as well.”

- God I love Cary Tennis. Here in his Salon advice column someone asks, “I studied print journalism: Now what?”

He replies that journalists “stand paralyzed before the fire, like animals watching their habitats burn. I can see what’s happening but am also somewhat paralyzed, doing an essentially 19th-century thing in this 21st century medium.”

Look how cool the people who follow me on Twitter are!...

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:46:08 +1000

Look how cool the people who follow me on Twitter are! TwitterSheep does clouds of your followers’ bios.

"A ceramics professor comes in on the first day of class and divides the students into two sections...."

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:37:05 +1000

“A ceramics professor comes in on the first day of class and divides the students into two sections. He tells one half of the class that their final grade will be based exclusively on the volume of their production; the more they make, the better their grade. The professor tells the other half of the class that they will be graded more traditionally, based solely on the quality of their best piece. At the end of the semester, the professor discovered that the students who were focused on making as many pots as possible also ended up creating the best pots, much better than the pots made by the students who spent all semester trying to create that one perfect pot.”

- Mike Arauz, referencing Bill Buxton’s book Sketching User Experiences to encourage little projects and iterative experimentation.

"Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work."

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 03:26:26 +1000

“Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

- Gustave Flaubert

"Every person of fairly good education and of restless mind writes a book. As a rule, it is a..."

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:20:29 +1000

“Every person of fairly good education and of restless mind writes a book. As a rule, it is a superficial book, but it swells the bulk and it indicated the cerebral unrest that is trying to express itself. We have arrived at a condition in which more books are printed than the world can read. This is true not only of books that are not worth reading, but it is true of the books that are. All this I take to be the result of an intellectual affranchisement that is new, and of a dissemination of knowledge instead of concentration of culture. Everybody wants to say something. But it is slowly growing upon the world that everybody has not got something to say. Therefore one may even at this moment detect the causes which will produce reaction. In 100 years there will not be so many books printed, but there will be more said. That seems to me to be inevitable.”

- “The March 25, 1893 Newark Daily Advocate ran predictions of what the world of 1993 would look like. Substitute the word “blog” for “book” in [Nym Crinkle’s] prediction and it could have easily been written today.” Via Paleo-Future.

"We all want to put on the style. It is part of presenting our public self, like getting dressed up..."

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:12:00 +1000

“We all want to put on the style. It is part of presenting our public self, like getting dressed up for a party. Often, when we actually get to the party all gussied-up, we’ll take great pains not to act that way, to show that the high style hasn’t really changed us, that we’re still just folks….We are, we like to think, what we are, whether in public or in private. No back-stage/front-stage difference divides our lives. This is an illusion, but we cherish it.”

- Richard Lanham in Analyzing Prose quoted in Deep Glamour

"Anonymity can be useful not just to cloak your identity or to try to fool people. It allows people..."

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:03:19 +1000

“Anonymity can be useful not just to cloak your identity or to try to fool people. It allows people who might pass something along to not be too caught up in the question of ‘who’s behind this?’. Instead, the idea exists on its own terms, which makes people a little more inclined to actually press Forward on the email.”

- Tomorrow Museum: Bill Wasik on Anonymity

The First Music Video shot on an iPhone 3GS (via...

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:21:00 +1000

The First Music Video shot on an iPhone 3GS (via sellington)

Cool-ish video. Dreadful song. Via @johnsonLAB.

Genevieve and I went to the Henri Cartier-Bresson at the Maison...

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 01:59:00 +1000

Genevieve and I went to the Henri Cartier-Bresson at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie. All the men in his photos look like Picasso, and all the women look like a Matisse. I actually liked this best, a photo of Cartier-Bresson drawing his self portrait, taken by his second wife Martine Franck.

It’s amazing how late it stays light here in Paris - until...

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 01:45:29 +1000

It’s amazing how late it stays light here in Paris - until 10.30 at least.

Summer afternoon flashmob fun: we went to the “Last...

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 06:18:24 +1000

Summer afternoon flashmob fun: we went to the “Last Moonwalk” Michael Jackson tribute in Paris, on Rue Oberkampf.