On Next Week
by admin on October 22, 2010
Will set up and configure 10(!) iPads for two companies next week, including tracking capabilities and installation of special software. Will then have to create iPad optimized versions of several databases, which is almost a whole science in itself (auto-sizing – does the database layout expand as it should in landscape mode? To make buttons work well in a touch environment, they should be around 40×40 pixels – is there adequate space between them?).
Ah, the wonderful problems of setting up and designing a whole new set of layouts…!
Distraction
by admin on October 15, 2010
One of the more embarrassing and self-indulgent challenges of our time is the task of relearning how to concentrate. The past decade has seen an unparalleled assault on our capacity to fix our minds steadily on anything. To sit still and think, without succumbing to an anxious reach for a machine, has become almost impossible.
…
The need to diet, which we know so well in relation to food, and which runs so contrary to our natural impulses, should be brought to bear on what we now have to relearn in relation to knowledge, people, and ideas. Our minds, no less than our bodies, require periods of fasting.
This Thing Went To Space
by admin on October 1, 2010
Totally amazing.
NYC maps exhibition
by admin on September 27, 2010
Pratt Manhattan Gallery’s “You Are Here” is all about maps and NYC. Among the works displayed through November will be:
- a three-dimensional map of the lower Manhattan skyline made of a Jell-O-like material by Liz Hickok
- a “Loneliness Map” from Craigslist’s Missed Connections by Ingrid Burrington
- personal maps created from a call for submissions by the Hand Drawn Map Association
- Bill Rankin’s maps of Not In My Back Yard-isms showcasing various geographies of community and exclusion
- a scratch-and-sniff map of New Yorkers’ smell preferences by Nicola Twilley
iPad and Newspaper Subscriptions?
by admin on September 16, 2010
The latest rumor on the interwebs: newspaper subscriptions are coming to the iPad, all with a little help from Apple themselves.
Read more about the rumors over at Techland and PCMag.
If there’s any truth in these rumors, the iPad just might change the way we consume newspapers much faster than anyone could possibly dream of.
The Stranded by Volcano Magazine
by admin on September 14, 2010
What we’ve made of it all is an 88-page souvenir of a moment in time when a non-life-threatening crisis hit the world, one for which nobody was to blame, and nobody knew how long it would last. People scrambled to find alternative routes home, any way, any how, or tried to make the best of wherever fate had placed them. It was a moment of unplanned disruption, never to be repeated in quite the same way. The perfect subject for a magazine, in fact.
The only issue of the Stranded by Volcano magazine is out now.
Mahler’s 5th and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra
by admin on September 12, 2010
Friday night the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra performed Mahler’s Fifth symphony with Daniel Harding. It was a competent performance, but afterwards a few little details somehow left me wondering:
As a musician, if someone else in the orchestra plays the wrong note, why would you show your contempt by making faces to the one sitting next to you?!
As a conductor, why would you, in the middle of the most quiet movement, to emphasize that we’re heading towards a crescendo, start making a hissing noise towards the musicians?!
And last, why does it always have to be someone in the audience that needs to (indistinctively, of course!) shout out a loud “bravo!” exactly on the final chord?!
As I said, it was a competent performance – but sadly, sometimes it’s the little details that makes for that lasting impression.
Saturday Miscellanea
by admin on September 11, 2010
Apple reveals approval guidelines for the App Store.
OmniFocus 1.8 for Mac is now available.
The new HDR feature added in 4.1 for the iPhone looks like it will be useful.
The MTA in NYC is looking for someone to keep their transit maps up-to-date.
Backup. Now. Set On Repeat.
by admin on September 10, 2010
A client of mine lost all of his information recently. His laptop had died – the hard drive had just given up. Barely any data could be recovered.
I asked him “so where do you keep your backup?”
It turns out he didn’t have one. “The last time I did a proper backup was about a year ago”.
Remember, it’s not a question of if your hard drive is going to fail, it’s a matter of when. Keep that in mind, and having a plan setup will just feel that much better.
On New York biking
by admin on September 9, 2010
Bikes can and should behave much more like cars than pedestrians. They should ride on the road, not the sidewalk. They should stop at lights, and pedestrians should be able to trust them to do so. They should use lights at night. And — of course, duh — they should ride in the right direction on one-way streets. None of this is a question of being polite; it’s the law. But in stark contrast to motorists, nearly all of whom follow nearly all the rules, most cyclists seem to treat the rules of the road as strictly optional. They’re still in the human-powered mindset of pedestrians, who feel pretty much completely unconstrained by rules.
The result is decidedly suboptimal for all concerned, but mostly for the bicyclists themselves. New York needs to make a collective quantum leap, from treating bicyclists like pedestrians to treating bicyclists like motorists. And unless and until it does, bike relations will continue to be marked by hostility and mistrust.
Felix Salmon’s theory on New York biking could be applied anywhere. Good read.
Looking Forward To
by admin on September 8, 2010
Hearing Mahler’s Fifth with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Stravinsky’s Pulcinella with the Berlin Philharmonics and Beethoven’s Eroica (once again the SRSO), all in one week.
The new 27″, quad-core beauty that is the new iMac is running circles around every task I throw at it, so what exactly will happen when I max it out with 16 GB of memory?!
The wait will soon be over – the new TV season is upon us: Law&Order:SVU, Big Bang Theory, Bones and 30 Rock all make a comeback with fresh new episodes. Just two more weeks to go.
On Living In Manhattan
by admin on September 7, 2010
Life in Manhattan is like living inside a gigantic Twitter stream. What you get to know about people you don’t know simply by accidental adjacency is astonishing.
Susan Orlean on big cities and social media.
Monday Miscellanea
by admin on September 6, 2010
Managed to make a client very happy by pushing their business from obscurity to a number 2 position on Google when doing a particular search that generates about 350,000 search results.
Ricardo Muti conducting Brahms’ Requiem Friday night – a sold out, extremely concentrated crowd kept quiet throughout the concert, as well as half a minute after the music had stopped. Concert of the year?!
Oh dear – apparently, Vicky Pollard actually exists in real life, and there’s two of them!
Baltic Sea Festival
by admin on August 23, 2010
The Baltic Sea Festival starts today – among the highlights*:
Brahms: Ein Deutsches Requiem
Brahms: Clarinet Quintet
Bartók: Count Bluebeards Castle
Tchaikovsky: Symphony nr 4
Shostakovish: Symphony nr 14
(*as defined by Daniel Harding, Music Director of Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra.)
Timeless Design
by admin on August 21, 2010
Retinart takes a look at how little the essential design of National Geographic magazine has changed since its introduction in 1888.
National Geographic’s front cover is a great example of how well simple branding can be tied to a product or message. In this case, the slightly warm yellow has become a symbol of wonderful photography, intriguing articles and serves as a doorway into places worlds away.
New York Street Scene
by admin on August 19, 2010
(Picture “Steam from a New York City street” taken by pchurch92 in December 2007.)
