Entries for January 2003
Information design hero Edward Tufte has some thoughts on Mac OS X:
The OS X interface design is distracting and self-conscious, with a marketing slickness rather the straight-forward transparent charming style of the past. It is out of tune with the superb industrial design of Apple hardware. Mac users will probably get used to it.
For my own current work (Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark with large files on large monitors), I see no particular reason to prefer the new design to 9.04. Indeed I regard 9.04 as nearly ideal (large flat-screen monitors are key; the Apple Cinema monitor is an enormous advance in design and as a working tool). Maybe when we do digital video that will make a difference in favor of OS X.
Sci-fi writer William Gibson (Neuromancer) has started a weblog. Long regarded as a Luddite when it comes to writing, Gibson says that’s just not true:
“Google me and you can learn that I do it all on a manual typewriter, something that hasn’t been true since 1985, but which makes such an easy hook for a lazy journalist that I expect to be reading it for the rest of my life. I only used a typewriter because that was what everyone used in 1977, and it was manual because that was what I happened to have been able to get, for free.”
His weblog is powered by Blogger, which, I suppose, is the 2003 version of the manual typewriter: not state-of-the-art, but free. (via bb)
Name analysis for “Jason”. “your speech can become very critical and sarcastic when you are frustrated or crossed”
Feng Shui for web designers lays down some rules and offers up some suggestions about building harmonious web sites:
- “The messy dithering of colours that occurs with JPEG compression is bad feng shui.”
- “Pages [that] have flowers growing on them [add] a comforting reflection of the natural world.”
- “Load up your website with lots of multimedia gimmicks and you’ll have a ch’i tornado, which is no good at all.”
- “The vector-based design platform of Macromedia Flash encourages curvy images and is therefore blessed with positive ch’i.”
- “Only have a smallish number of carefully-selected links. Long lists of links are stagnant in appearance, and the ch’i rapidly escapes through them.”
Ingenious origami pinhole cameras. camera is made out of photo paper which is then developed
We’re winning. But pundrity is a dying idea like middle management is a dying idea.
Deadline for 2003 Webbys is 01/24. note to Webbys’ organizers: for lots of free publicity and traffic, create a “weblog” category and make it $25 to enter, not $95.
Prompted by a discussion about maps of the London Underground I had with a friend, I spent a few minutes searching for a geographically accurate Tube map that I remembered running across a couple of years ago. I’m putting it here so I don’t lose it again. The type is a little small so you might have to squint to read it (sorry, couldn’t find a bigger version).
Compare with the usual schematic version.
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