Posts tagged: Log
Everything I have posted to this site tagged "Log."
April 14, 2024
Periodical 18 – A Personal Web
I am building a personal web....
April 8, 2024
Eclipse
Partial (80%) eclipse of the sun in Durham, N.C....
April 2, 2024
Thought Experiment
Would I be ok if I was done?...
April 1, 2024
Out-Random the AI
It is human nature to create. This can define us without differentiating us....
March 30, 2024
Inner Worlds
Everyone's inner world is the one they are truly living in. There are billions of these worlds, each one larger than you or I can imagine....
March 9, 2024
Periodical 17 – Optimization
Optimizing a home is a years-long process....
February 24, 2024
object – Wooden Task Lamp
I made a task lamp in just a couple of hours....
February 17, 2024
Periodical 16 – Useful Lifetimes
One's moral progress is measured in unexpected moments....
February 16, 2024
Reality Doubt
We're about a year away from some piece of media that makes us doubt our own perceptions of reality....
February 2, 2024
Periodical 15
All art is a copy of something....
January 21, 2024
Periodical 14 – v DIY
While you're here, make the world your own....
January 7, 2024
Periodical 13
Image ecology and my top 10 science fiction films....
January 6, 2024
Periodical 12 – Sometimes the Old Way
Convenience is overrated. Convenience, I think, is the enemy of memory. The easier the experience, the less of it we actually experience....
December 31, 2023
Year in Review – 2023
A few notes and lists from the year 2023....
December 6, 2023
Periodical – 11 – What Could Have Been
Dave Karpf's re-read of the entire WIRED corpus has me thinking about predicting the future....
December 1, 2023
Periodical – 10
Thinking back on old tech and making my case for why local storage is better than the cloud....
November 29, 2023
Interaction Design is Two Things
Managing attention and persuasion are the means and ends of interaction design....
November 27, 2023
Periodical – 9
I’ve done something brilliant. A few years ago, we decided to sell our Sonos system and retreat back to an old-school, wired stereo. I liked the...
November 26, 2023
Periodical – 8
This is the first image taken from space. It was one of many images captured from 65 miles above Earth by a camera attached to a captured German V-2...
November 25, 2023
Periodical – 7
I spend a lot of time looking at websites; it’s a big part of what I do for a living. With practice, I’ve learned to look at the products of...
November 24, 2023
Periodical – 6
Good morning. It is very early. Since daylight savings, my youngest has been awake an hour or two earlier than usual and thinks the rest of us...
November 23, 2023
Periodical – 5
Happy Thanksgiving! Here in Durham, it is close to perfect. Clear skies and heading toward 57°; the aroma of holiday fireplaces is drifting...
November 22, 2023
Periodical – 4
Type “medieval marginalia” into your search engine of choice and you will quickly be confronted with a slew of naughty images straight out of the...
November 21, 2023
Periodical – 3
Hello from a rainy and cold autumn morning in Durham. We are in the midst of the most magical time of the year. Our enormous old oak is covering...
November 20, 2023
Periodical – 2
Yesterday, I mentioned the Yoto Daily, a daily podcast for kids that loads up automatically on the Yoto player. I just wanted to add that what makes...
November 19, 2023
Periodical – 1
This is a semi-daily check-in. Experimental; likely to not actually be daily. Regular and short. The kids are in the bath, listening to the Yoto...
September 10, 2023
The View from Here
There are many reasons to make things and share them, to write and publish, to speak and record. So many reasons, most unknown; far be it from me to...
August 21, 2023
The Internet's Greatest Potential
It seems that the internet’s greatest potential is to create intimacy across distance. Which means we still have a long way to go...
July 19, 2023
The Internet is Already a Social Network
Make it easier for anyone to have a website. Make syndication easier and better. That’s all that is needed to reclaim the power we’ve ceded to the...
July 11, 2023
The Big Picture
When your clients are persuaded by your point of view and expertise, they will not care what tools you use or what processes you follow. They will...
June 25, 2023
Ambient Information
Most of the time, we’re content to simply know that information exists; we lack the interest and patience to actually know the information itself....
June 21, 2023
The Fragile Bond Between Attention and Information
Most communication is visual. Isn’t that fascinating? Think of how much a picture, a symbol, a facial expression, or a gesture can communicate on...
June 11, 2023
object – WIRED Magazine, Issue 1
WIRED Magazine published its first issue in March/April of 1993 — thirty years ago. It was almost immediately considered an index of the zeitgeist...
June 9, 2023
Writing is a Primary Design Tool
In an interview with Tracy Francis at McKinsey, Jony Ive had something profound to say about writing and design: “You’ll often find creatives are...
June 3, 2023
Fascinated by Layout
Ever since I was a child, I have been fascinated by layout. I didn’t know to call it that before I studied design; I just knew that I could look at...
June 2, 2023
object – Bedside Lamp
We briefly dabbled with smart-bulbs in our house. It did not go well. Why we make these things, I do not know. Why is controlling a lamp with your...
May 21, 2023
Attention Degrowth
Sometimes I think that may be the most important insight beneath any design decision. Not to be combatted with manipulations, tricks, or just being...
May 16, 2023
object – The Present Clock
Something like eight or nine years ago, I funded a Kickstarter campaign for a clock that Scott Thrift was making with a neat idea behind it — its...
May 15, 2023
object – Yoto
In the month before the pandemic shut everything down, I was in the midst of some research on how designers — and other kinds of creative experts...
May 7, 2023
Blogging Is Not Publishing It's Therapy
I keep a NOTES.txt document as a catch-all for any ideas I jot down that don’t have an immediate place elsewhere. It is a digital container that is...
April 29, 2023
object – Coffee Cup
I bought a pair of used small porcelain mugs at a thrift shop for about $1 back in 2009. I have used one of them nearly every day since. I believe...
April 28, 2023
object – 1999 Qualcomm QCP-860
My first cellphone was the Qualcomm QCP-860. It was marketed at the time as a “thin phone.” By today’s standards, that might seem silly, but at the...
April 27, 2023
object – OMNI Magazine, Issue 1
I briefly subscribed to OMNI magazine in the late ’80s and early ’90s. It was the sort of magazine that thoroughly suited my interests but was often...
April 26, 2023
object – Game Boy
On Christmas in 1990, I received a Game Boy! Though I was never much of a video game player, I was very excited about this little, handheld system....
April 24, 2023
object – Cylinder Lamp
In the spring of 2003, I graduated from college and moved in to my first apartment. After my housemate and I had moved all our things in, I made a...
April 23, 2023
object – Carved Nupe Door
Some days, if the temperature and humidity are just right, this door opens once again into the home my grandparents kept in Nyack, New York. My...
April 22, 2023
object – A 20 Year-Old Sketchbook
I began keeping it in the final months of my senior year at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). A few friends and I had managed to register...
April 16, 2023
Technology and Moral Responsibility
As I’ve been cleaning up my site, I’ll occasionally read back over something I wrote many years ago. Yesterday, I re-read a series of posts I wrote...
March 26, 2023
The Smallest Details
In Minimalism in UX: the blessing of no choices, Dimitris Chatzilias covers a short list of common details that are often overlooked in a way that...
March 24, 2023
Outlines are IA
When you create an outline, you are arranging ideas in relation to one another: a heading is a big idea, a sub-heading is a smaller one related to...
March 13, 2023
Sub-Second Orientation
When a visitor encounters a web-page for the first time, they will ask and answer three questions within about one second: What is this...
March 8, 2023
Friction Can Be Good
Something I have noticed as content, software, and product design have attempted to eradicate friction is that friction is not necessarily a bad...
December 25, 2021
Christmas Day – Multiple UFO Sighting
At 6pm on the evening of Christmas Day, 2021, in Durham, NC, my wife and I were preparing to walk our children down the street to their...
June 18, 2018
Sunk Costs for Spite
The city where I work just spent the last two weeks clearing out a few patches of land in between the four-lane main thoroughfare in and out of...
June 14, 2018
Dada, Sit Here
S said her first sentence this morning. I was sitting on the coffee table in the living room, putting on my shoes, when she climbed up and sat...
June 6, 2018
Mind and Body
Minds are complicated. We can think about so many things at once that to say that one’s mind and body are in the same “place” at all times is hardly...
June 3, 2018
Design in a Vacuum
The baby has been put to bed. There is still plenty of daylight left. There are many definitions of “design.” One I liked for a while goes like...
June 2, 2018
Clocks
Heavy rain. SA is napping; SE is swapping out our modem. I like clocks. I always have. I like the way they look, the way they work, and the way...
June 1, 2018
You Are Here
Hello from a silent office. No one is here but me. KM and I spent the day together as planned months ago. He’s on a serious sabbatical from work...