Russian Sledges

It’s always exciting to try new things as part of MoMA’s graphic design team. In the case of Applied Design, the new Department of Architecture and Design exhibition curated by Paola Antonelli and Kate Carmody, we got to challenge ourselves by using technology featured in the show to program a moving, dynamic title wall.

Click here to view the embedded video.

From the several options for the title wall we had put together, Paola and Kate chose our idea of creating an animated projection, using icons of different works in the show to form the letters in the title. The problem was logistics—animating each icon by hand would be incredibly time-consuming, and wouldn’t leave much room for adjustments.

The solution came to us when Paola described “the elegance of code” as one of the inspirations for Applied Design. We decided to try using the programming languages featured in the show to create the animation. With the help of my good friend David Yen, we coded the title wall in Processing, an open-source programming language simple enough for non-programmers, but complex enough for the kind of animation we were designing.

The title wall animation, made out of icons of works in the show

The title wall animation, made out of icons of works in the show

The title wall animation, made out of icons of works in the show

The title wall animation, made out of icons of works in the show

The code behind the animation, built in Processing

The title wall for Applied Design

Using code to program the title wall was a first for all of us, but who knows, maybe this process will only become the norm in the future.

Originality suggests doing something that’s never been done before. Surprise suggests doing something unexpected with familiar ingredients. For that reason, surprise is the more subtle and difficult achievement. And that is the core achievement of Eskapade. Eskapade is a family built on a single lovely surprise: that a roman text face can have a fully realized Fraktur companion.

We have a rule of no screen time during the week ... On the weekends, they can play. I give them a limit of half an hour and then stop. Enough. It can be too addictive, too stimulating for the brain.

That quote is from a parent who develops apps for kids. The Atlantic's Hanna Rosin went to a developer's conference and what she heard from the parents there might surprise you: The Touch-Screen Generation.

Tags: parenting

starring Farrah Fawcett

regular expression generator(perl php python java javascript coldfusion c c++ ruby vb vbscript j# c# c++.net vb.net)

Average lifespan of a Google product, via The Guardian

Our user base recently grew 15x (and counting), and this changed everything. In a week we have gone from a personal project ran by three friends to a personal project ran by three friends with about 150,000 users.

Thank you everyone for your kind words, support, critique and active participation!

We are doing everything to bring things back to normal again, and we need your support.

We pay lots of attention to user requests, so we could not ignore the one where you had been asking for a way to donate us money.

We have been looking for a good way to accept donations, and we found Flattr. It is a simple way to manage your micro donations. You can either donate us fixed amount of money, or press the “flattr” button, and then your monthly budget would be distributed it among us and other projects you donated to during a month.

If you feel like donating a significant sum or you find flattr inconvenient, drop us a note (hello@theoldreader.com), we will figure something out.

If it’s a stretch, please don’t feel obligated to send us anything. We will use the money to expand our server infrastructure, which will help us to refresh feeds more often, process import queue more quickly, and even might even allow us to get more external resources to implement new features sooner.

Thank you everyone for your support. Every single contribution is an enormous help for us.

The Old Reader team.

(photo by rossomakha)

First off? We’re having internet issues in our house. This is why my presence here and everywhere else online has been a bit sporadic. I apologize for this. Without regular blogging my left eye starts to twitch and I acquire an unexplained limp. If I don’t solve these technological issues soon, I’ll be rotating around the “Free Wi-Fi” locations around here.

Secondly? Did you hear that they’re shutting down my favorite RSS feed reader in July? I mean – FIRST they took away the ability to share and comment on the thing – and now they’re getting rid of it? All together? Kim is not a happy camper.

For those of you who don’t know what RSS is or a feed reader, let me give you an easy summary. RSS is – literally – “Really Simple Syndication”. Basically, any website that creates regular content, creates RSS feeds of that content without any bells and whistles. Just the basic HTML of the content itself. Then, “Feed Readers” like Google Reader allow you to subscribe to those pages, and it funnels those RSS feeds all into one location. So, if you read a lot of blogs/news/magazines type sites, you can read all of their updates in one location. You don’t have to keep bookmarks or remember links.

Google Reader used to let you “share” out items you really liked. I loved this feature because my “shared” items also displayed on my blog. And then any of my friends in Reader could comment on those items. So, it gave us a little community to discuss articles and entries. And then? THEN? Google took that function away. And a small part of my soul died.

But now? NOW? They’re taking away the entire reader. Basically they want us all to use Google+, which we won’t do simply out of spite now. So…where do we all go? WHERE DO YOU GO?

On Twitter yesterday, some key peeps decided to start using The Old Reader. Evidently you can A) Share items and B) Comment on those shared items. Which I have already done with this entry.

What are you waiting for? GO JOIN! FOLLOW ME! I’LL FOLLOW YOU BACK! These type of communities ONLY work if we all go. We need to ALL go over there and start following each other and start sharing items and talking about them and creating what we used to have on Google Reader. PUH-LEASE? If you read more than 5 blogs or websites a day, you will love having a feed reader. It means you only have to make one stop every day to see all of your favorite websites. And their entries ONLY show up if they have new content. So, if they don’t update regularly you can still follow them without stopping by their site constantly for updates.

If you’ve never used an RSS reader before and have any questions/confusion – just post a comment here and I’ll help you out. If you have, then you may be like me and appreciate the excuse to start over with your subscriptions. Don’t you still have those blogs on your Google Reader that you don’t know why you still follow? You don’t ever comment or even read their entries anymore. Why are you still subscribed? Well, now you can just start over with the ones you actually want to read!

Or – if you want – you can import your subscriptions from Google Reader. I did not do that because I knew I needed to prune my list a bit, but if you like your list as is? Easy as pie!

Come join the party! We’re leaving Google Reader before they shut the place down, and we’re setting up at The Old Reader, I can’t wait to see you there!

“#5060,” 2006-2009. © Mike Brodie: from A Period of Juvenile Prosperity, Courtesy M+B Gallery, Los Angeles.

 

“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.” ―Jack Kerouac, On the Road

There’s an excitement and allure to hitting the road with no destination in sight and no route in mind. This is part of the appeal of Mike Brodie‘s recent work. Captured during a three-year period when, as a teenager, he hitchhiked, rode freight trains and lived off the grid with a group of fellow travelers, Brodie’s images have a movement and restlessness to them that celebrates the freedom of the itinerant life. This is the modern-day equivalent of Jack Kerouac’s seminal novel On the Road. But just as Kerouac and his Beat Generation peers had their share of despair, Brodie’s photos show that life on the road is not for the faint of heart. His subjects are soot-covered, sleeping on the side of the tracks and surviving on the food others have thrown away. Yet they ride on, ever curious about what the next spot on the map can bring.

“Mike Brodie: A Period of Juvenile Prosperity” opens at M+B gallery in Los Angeles on Saturday, March 16, with a book signing by the artist, whose first monograph, A Period of Juvenile Prosperity, was published earlier this month by Twin Palms. A concurrent exhibition is also running in New York City at Yossi Milo Gallery.

 

“#3102,” 2006-2009. © Mike Brodie: from A Period of Juvenile Prosperity, Courtesy M+B Gallery, Los Angeles.

 

“#5065,” 2006-2009. © Mike Brodie: from A Period of Juvenile Prosperity, Courtesy M+B Gallery, Los Angeles.

 

“#0924,” 2006-2009. © Mike Brodie: from A Period of Juvenile Prosperity, Courtesy M+B Gallery, Los Angeles.

 

“#3025,” 2006-2009. © Mike Brodie: from A Period of Juvenile Prosperity, Courtesy M+B Gallery, Los Angeles.

Om Malik, continuing the conversation by clarifying his point:

It is hard to trust Google anymore to make rational and consumer centric decisions. I said — nuanced as it might be — that I don’t trust Google to introduce new apps and keep them around, because despite what the company says, these apps are not their main business. Their main business is advertising and search — regardless of whatever nonsense you might read. …

I am far more likely to believe in and use products that are the main focus of the company behind them. Online storage? Dropbox. Time-shifting web content? … Instapaper. Short form communication? Twitter. Baby pictures and wedding photos to make single people miserable (or happy for being single)? Facebook.

The point is that a company whose main focus is a specific service or a singular product, like Evernote, is far more likely to focus its energies to build a business around it and keep it around.

It’s a good distinction to make. I’m more conservative about what I invest my time into and who I trust with my data.

∞ Permalink

Ex libris

“Between” is a 2012 exhibit by artist Math Monahan featuring a collection of braided reference books that slowly unfurl back into ordinary tomes. The books are installed at the University of Michigan in the Penny Stamps Graduate Studio and the Hatcher Graduate library.

Between is an installation that explores the stillness in the space between places, powers and context. Using a system of braided books, I am attempting to create a structure that possesses its power and agency only when it exist between academic book and art object. By allowing the tension of the circle arrangement to hold the object together, without adhesives or restraint, the pages slowly unbraid themselves over time giving the installation the opportunity to become books, again, in their original form.

images via Math Monahan

via Visual News, Neatorama

In July 2010, bottles of beer were found in a 200-year-old shipwreck in the Aland archipelago and will now be replicated by Finnish brewery Stallhagen, the NY Daily News reports. The brewery plans to release the beer for sale in 2014.

“There is ever-increasing demand for specialty beer on the international market and we are convinced that our product is going to interest beer enthusiasts around the world,” Stallhagen’s managing director Jan Wennstroem said in a statement.

image via NY Daily News

via Digg

Swiss artist Felice Varini creates large scale anamorphic illusion paintings in which geometric shapes and patterns are visible from only one vantage point. He began creating the works in 1979, starting with small paintings and relatively simple shapes. More recent works have covered entire rooms, buildings, and even a small town in the Swiss alps. To create the paintings, Varini first projects his designs over the space he wishes to paint. He then traces the projected image and begins painting. The finished painting can be viewed from the spot where he originally placed the projector.

via Gwarlingo, Visual News

By Emily Gera on Mar 22, 2013 at 10:00a

The iconic London Underground map has been re-designed based on the art style of Super Mario.

Created by Reddit user Chris Evans, the image covers Zone 1 of London's underground transit system and features graphics from the retro world of Super Mario Bros. 3, pipes and castles included. It is inspired, at least in part, by a similar Super Mario map that recreates the famed Washington DC Metro Line.

The full image is available below:

• Source
• Chris Evans (Reddit)

From the Photographic Morgue at the University of Texas, Austin.

RECORD NUMBER NYJA001002
SUBSERIES TITLE B. Subject
BOX NUMBER         B133
FOLDER TITLE Fawns
CATEGORY         Human Interest & Lifestyle
DATE PUBLISHED 1960-10-26
PHOTOGRAPHER UPI Telephoto
ITEM TITLE           Off to School
ITEM CAPTION   The pet fawn of Brad Curry of Galesburg, Michigan, watches him depart from home every morning on his schoolbus.

Metro Map, Pyongyang, North Korea

An interactive metro map from North Korea’s secretive capital. The green buttons across the bottom of the map represent all the stations: press one and the path from your current station to your destination lights up. With just a handful of stations on two lines (and only one interchange), I hardly think many people are going to be overwhelmed by the system’s complexity.

Wikipedia’s article on the Pyongyang Metro is actually a very interesting read: the stations are mostly named thematically (Comrade, Enlightenment, Three Rejuvenations, etc.), while accounts vary as to exactly how many stations foreign visitors to the city can visit – whatever the final number, it seems that they’re mostly limited to the newer, more impressive stations.

(Source: Claude1688/Flickr)

savagedamsel:

whospam:

I need all of these.

WarpZone › DrWho Cookie Cutters

It’s one of the great untold stories of the 2012 presidential campaign, a tale of ego and intrigue that nearly upended the Republican primary contest and might even have produced a different nominee: As Mitt Romney struggled in the weeks leading up to the Michigan primary, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum nearly agreed to form a joint “Unity Ticket” to consolidate conservative support and topple Romney.

never forget

(via @mihai, Twitter)

#unsungHeroesOfGoogleReader (with tweets) · mihai · Storify:

Notable:

@arif_pasha For a while, the lone remaining maintenance engineer on Reader. SERIOUSLY. Kept lights running.

@jenna: Designed the major social improvements – which were later rolled back to serve Google+ @dolapo: The amazing frontend code behind comments, friends, iPhone Safari UI, fine-grained trends. @susan_nectarine: The wizard behind Comments! Fought for server support (which kept Reader alive longer). @justinhaugh: helped with infamously gnarly “mark all as read”, sort by oldest, subscriber counts in headers

If Google Reader were a movie or TV show, at the end of the spectacle the credits would roll and you would get to see who was responsible for what you just saw. But in today's age, software "about box credits" are no longer common.

I thought it might be nice, for the sake of posterity, to list all those who worked on Reader over the years. There's been a lot of discussion about Reader's imminent shutdown, but most of it focused on Google (the corporate entity) and its strategy. However, at the end of the day, Reader was built by people. I and a few others have been lucky enough to be more visible, but everyone involved deserves credit and thanks. This is especially the case since as Chris and Brian have described, Reader faced quite a few internal struggles. As I remember it, nearly everyone on the Reader team explicitly requested to join it, and often had to fight to keep their role.

Coming up with this list was difficult, both technically (can you name all your coworkers going back 8 years?), and because it was tough to decide where to draw the line. Google is a big company, and many people in many supporting roles helped to Reader out. First, here's a list of all full-time Reader team members:

• Chris Wetherell (2005-2008): Software Engineer, now at Avocado.
• Jason Shellen (2005-2006): Product Manager, now at Boxer.
• Ben Darnell (2005-2009): Software Engineer, now at Viewfinder.
• Laurence Gonsalves (2005-2010): Software Engineer
• Steve Goldberg (2005-2011): Engineering Manager, still at Google
• Mihai Parparita (2005-2010): Software Engineer, now at Quip
• Kevin Fox (2005, 2006): User Experience Designer, now at Electric Imp.
• Misha Dynin (2006, 2009): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Justin Haugh (2006-2008): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Brad Hawkes (summer of 2006, 2007-2010): Software Engineer Intern, Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Nick Baum (2006-2007): Product Manager, now at StoryWorth.
• Dolapo Falola (20% in 2006, 2007-2009): Software Engineer, now eating yogurt and granola at Foursquare.
• Chrix Finne (2007-2008): Product Manager, now at Optimizely.
• Jenna Bilotta (2007-2010): User Experience Designer, now at Avocado.
• Shreyas Desai (2007-2008): Software Engineer in Test, now at Yahoo!.
• Susan Shepard (2007-2009): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Gaurav Jain (2007-2009): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Jason Hall (summer of 2007): Software Engineer Intern, still at Google.
• Nitin Shantharam (summer of 2007): Software Engineer Intern, now at Swapbox.
• Brian Shih (2008-2010): Product Manager, now at Pocket Gems.
• Mike Knapp (2008-2009): Software Engineer, now at Shoes of Prey
• Nick Santaniello (2008-2009): Product Support, now at Robysoft.
• Derek Snyder (2008-2009): Software Engineer, now at a as-of-yet-unnamed startup.
• Matt Steiner (2008-2009): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Beverly Yang (2009-2010): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Derek Mauro (2009-2010): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Garrett Wu (2009-2010): Software Engineer, now at WibiData.
• Ye Zhou (2009-2010): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Devin Kennedy (summer of 2009): Software Engineer Intern, still at Google.
• Arif Siddiquee (2009-2011): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Alan Green (2011-2012): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Mick Hollins (2011-2012): Software Engineer, still at Google.

Additionally, here's others who contributed to Reader in various roles at Google:

• Design: Micheal Lopez
• Executives: Greg Badros, Jeff Huber, Pavni Diwanji
• Legal: Halimah DeLaine
• Localization: Gabriella Laszlo, John Saito, Katsuhiko Momoi, Sasan Banava
• PR: Nate Tyler, Oscar Shine, Sonya Boralv
• Product Management: Bruce Polderman, Sabrina Ellis
• Product Marketing: Kevin Systrom, Louis Gray, Peter Harbison, Robby Stein, Tom Stocky, Zach Yeskel
• Quality Assurance: Amar Amte, Jan Carpenter, Kavitha Venkatesan, Madhuri Kulkarni, Thanh Le
• Site Reliability Engineering: Chen Wang, Christoph Pfisterer, David Parrish, Ed Bardsley, Eric Weigle, Gary Luo, Huaxia Xia, James Long, Jerry Zhiwei Cen, Keith Brady, Lantian Zheng, Liren Chen, Matthew Eastman, Nadav Samet, Niall Sheridan, Olivier Beyssac, Patrick Scott, Paul Chien, Pereira Braga, Petru Paler, Sara Smollett, Scott Lamb, Sebastian Adamczyk, Vladimir Filipović, Wensheng Wang, Yu Liao
• 20% time and additional engineering: Aaron Boodman, Abdulla Kamar, Akshay Patil, Aman Bhargava, Brad Fitzpatrick, Brett Bavar, Brett Slatkin, Charles Chen, Ed Ho, John Pongsajapan, Olga Stroilova, Peter Baldwin, Steve Jenson, Steve Lacey, T.V. Raman, Wiktor Gworek
• User Experience Designers: Jonathan Terleski, Sean McBride
• User Experience Research: Anna Avrekh, David Choi, Nika Smith, Theresa Sobczak
• User Support: Graham Waldon, Paul Wilcox, Wen-Ai Yu

I'm sure I'm missing names and got things wrong, so don't hesitate to contact me with corrections. And to everyone that I worked with on Reader, it was a pleasure!

P.S. For another take on the people behind Reader, see Chris's #unsungHeroesOfGoogleReader tweets.

The time has come my fabric friends… It’s preview time! I am off to International Quilt Market in a week and I am busily getting samples made and booth structures painted. I have been so busy that I have completely forgotten to show you what I have been cookin’ up in the Pinkerville lab. Please meet my newest brain child… Salt Water. 24 quilting cottons, 6 voiles and 4 laminates. Salt Water ships to stores in December  so it’s time to let your local shop know that you want it!

 

 

Block users from following or commenting – Customer Feedback for The Old Reader

Today on Married To The Sea: church questions

“In 1986, Foot was the subject of one of the best-known newspaper headlines of all time. The Times ran an article about Foot, who had been put in charge of a nuclear disarmament committee. The headline stated “Foot Heads Arms Body.” Although originally written as a joke by editor Martyn Cornell, the paper ran it.”

- Michael Foot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia