Welcome to The Very Daily Weblog of Joshua Blankenship



Five Things I’ve Learned Today

1. Handtrucks and furniture dollies are God’s gift to man.
2. Moving at a leisurely pace is non-stressful, especially with a strong breeze.
3. Moving to a new apartment in Boston on Friday, August 31 is most likely infinitely more desirable than moving to a new apartment in Boston on Saturday, September 1.
4. My wife is a packing/cleaning genius.
5. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are still the best mid-move snack.

Fri 08.31.07 (0 comments)

Tagged: Friday Five List

London landmarks illustrated with type from designer/illustrator Oscar Wilson for the Visit London advertising campaign.

Fri 08.31.07 (0 comments)

Advancement is a cultural condition in which an Advanced individual—i.e., a true genius—creates a piece of art that 99 percent of the population perceives to be bad. However, this is not because the work itself is flawed; this is because most consumers are not Advanced. Now, don’t assume this means that everything terrible is awesome, or vice versa; that contrarianism has no place in Advancement theory. The key to Advancement is that Advanced artists a) do not do what is expected of them but also b) do not do the opposite of what is expected of them. — Chuck Klosterman, Real Genius: An introduction to the highly advanced theory of Advancement

This is the best article/essay I’ve read on the internet in six months.


Zach Klein and his lady friend Courtney have a Vimeo-based cooking show called Copy & Taste (clever domain naming). The Blankenships are currently learning to cook, too, so new recipes are always welcomed.

Thu 08.30.07 (5 comments)

Daft Hands

Do not be fooled by the first 40 seconds. This video is an amazing feat of human ingenuity, practice, timing, and awesomeness. It is harder, better, faster, and stronger.

Thu 08.30.07 (6 comments)

Tagged: Video


Trucker lingo. Atlanta’s nickname is so wrong only truckers could get away with it. Why does language fascinate me so?

Thu 08.30.07 (0 comments)

So someone has written a Wordpress plugin that detects Mobile Safari and then serves up a iPhone-specific style theme. Doesn’t that sort of defeat the purpose of the fact that Mobile Safari is a full browser?

Thu 08.30.07 (4 comments)

Jojo Mayer - Drum and Bass


Drummer Jojo Mayer pulls in styles like jazz and electronica’s drum and bass to create something technically-proficient and really fascinating. He describes it as an “endeavor in reverse engineering the textures and rhythms of the current stream of computer generated music into a live performed, improvisational format.” I just like watching him play.

Tip of the hat to Caleb for introducing me to Jojo.

Thu 08.30.07 (3 comments)

Tagged: Music, Video


If you’re a Costco member, you can get a $50 iTunes gift card for $45. For those of you who might be bad at math, that’s 10% off your music purchasing. (And for the math geniuses, it’s still 10% off.)

Wed 08.29.07 (1 comment)

Lovely portfolio of illustration and design from Adam Cruickskank. I really like the variety of styles, typography, and, of course, yetis.

Wed 08.29.07 (1 comment)

Illustrator Steven Harrington has a store called You & I with a few screen-printed posters and goodies. I love his style. It’s whimsical and feels like the 70’s, but still fresh.

Tue 08.28.07 (0 comments)

I just got wind of the upcoming book Seven Hundred Penguins, a collection of book jacket designs from the famed book publisher spanning 1935 to present.

Tue 08.28.07 (2 comments)

ba•cn

[ba-cn] — noun

1. notifications, newsletters, updates, etc. that you sign up to receive via email
2. email you want, but not right now
3. email notifications that are somewhere between spam and personal email: Between Twitter, Flickr, and Virb, my inbox is full of bacn.

[Origin: 2007, coined via PodCamp Pittsburgh conversations]

Tue 08.28.07 (3 comments)

This is a Definition


Pretty illustration work from Evgeny Kiselev.

Tue 08.28.07 (0 comments)

Fantastic motion graphics reel from Onesize. The audio/sound design is equally impressive from Run Silent. (via avclub on Twitter)

Tue 08.28.07 (1 comment)

Speaking of Threadless, they’re having a $10 t-shirt back to school sale through next Monday. Clothe yourself.

Mon 08.27.07 (1 comment)

The SkinnyCorp Method for Creating Online Awesomeness (and other cool stuff) 45 minute presentation from the Threadless founders. Stellar, and without a hint of cynicism. I love this company.

Mon 08.27.07 (1 comment)

How to fold an origmai t-shirt from a dollar bill. This might save your life one day. (I have no paperwork to back up that claim.)

Mon 08.27.07 (1 comment)

You can explore the sky in Google Earth now.

Mon 08.27.07 (1 comment)

Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Photography, and Privacy Law

I walked around with my camera waiting for things to happen - cliches, incidents - I leave it open. I am only partly conscious of what’s going on - there’s always more than what I expect, or less than what I hope. The instant where things occur is serendipity.

The main exhibit at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art right now is a massive collection of Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s photography. I was struck by his fantastic use of lighting in most of his work, especially the series of street photographs where “DiCorcia attached an elaborate system of strobe lights to construction scaffolding, and aimed them and his camera toward a fixed point on the the sidewalk [and] from 20 feet away, he operated the camera’s shutter and the lights, collecting images of passers-by.” The subjects are thus lit against a mostly black backdrop, which makes for fascinating portraits of daily street life.

Some conversation ensued while we were viewing the images about the laws governing the use of a person’s likeness in such photographs without their permission/knowledge. And oddly enough, one of DiCorcia’s subjects sued him for exactly that reason.

2005’s Nussenzweig v. DiCorcia pitted the photographer against retired diamond merchant Erno Nussenzweig with Nussenzweig claiming the photo violated his privacy rights under New York’s Civil Rights Law, which prohibits the use of a person’s likeness, without consent, “for advertising or for purposes of trade.”

Despite the fact that DiCorcia sold ten original edition prints of the photograph for $20,000-30,000 each, the court ruled in favor of DiCorcia and the gallery that initially showed the photographs, saying that the defendants’ uses of Nussenzweig’s likeness were not commercial - this was artistic expression (and therefor protected by the 1st Amendment.)

It’s interesting to me that the court is deciding/defining what constitutes “art.”

The fine print: many thanks to the ICA, Joseph, Mrs. Blankenship, and Wikipedia for helping me think through this.

Mon 08.27.07 (5 comments)

Tagged: An Entry

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