This is probably one of my most favorite photographs I’ve ever taken. I want to move more in this direction. I also want a wider-angle lens. Badly.

1. A day off, spent with my wife, walking around Cambridge whilst the snow fell fast
2. Getting paid, man (a mess of long time coming client checks)
3. Delivery Thai food from Bangkok Bistro
4. Taking this photo
5. Losing two hours to the draw of Harvard Book Store

You should make a pinhole web camera.
— Lee Gilmore

For anyone experiencing trouble with media uploads to sites like Flickr and Virb while using OS X Leopard, Brad has helpful advice/links at the Virb blog on how to uninstall Flash and upgrade to Adobe’s fixed version.

A much-needed haircut from my much-appreciated wife. Now, if I could just learn to cut her hair, we’d probably save $1000 a year between the two of us.

When I find that a photographer on Flickr who seems interesting, I try to make a habit of looking at their Favorites. Looking at what they like often leads me to other good photographers and so on and so forth. And then sometimes I find you. You probably have a few photos I like. Or maybe just that one. But I’m not sold on the whole of your photostream; at least not yet.

Conundrum: do I take a chance and add you as a contact? Something about a photo or two of yours is compelling; I can’t quite put my finger on it yet. But I’m scared. What if your photos kind of start, well, sucking? What if you’re inconsistent? I’m very picky, you know. But then again, what if you’re a diamond in the rough and your photo future is so bright that have to wear shades? Maybe I just need to give you a break? If I don’t make you a contact right now, I’ll probably forget to track you down again. And then you’ll be gone forever, into the internet ether. There needs to be a better way.

I want a trial period. I want to kick the tires. I want to know if your photos are consistently interesting enough for me to want to see all of them (ostensibly in perpetuity). I want to try you out without going all “hey, let’s be friends” and making you a contact immediately. Maybe the trial period lasts 2 weeks, and then Flickr asks me if I like you enough to keep you and upgrade your status, or dump you and be rid of your photos forever. Maybe I can set a preference for how long I want the trial to be.

I know I could set this up myself by snagging your Flickr RSS feed and keeping up with that via a feed reader or browser bookmarks. And then I could simply delete you if I stop finding it inspiring/interesting to follow you. Of course, by that point, if I’m still on-the-fence it’s too much effort for something I’m not convinced of, so why bother? If only there was a way to do this within Flickr before I go all commitment un-phobic, I might find you to be awesome. I might discover contacts within community that I never would have given the chance, otherwise. This might be a really cool thing.

Wondering if any other sites are doing anything like this,
Joshua

New site from seminal branding and identity company Landor Associates.

I finally got around to moving .com/moblog to the new site layout. I’ve got a big folder of photos (read: January—July) that I need to upload at some point. I miss having a cameraphone; that will change in ’08.

Jumpchart is an online interactive wireframe tool for clients and developers/designers to collaborate with. I’ve always found functional wireframes and “live” information architecture to be preferable — websites don’t exist on paper. Most clients I’ve worked with have difficulty understanding the interplay of a site until they’re clicking around page to page in a browser. This web app solves that, and seems to give the client/contractor relationship a sense of real collaboration that could help gets things done more quickly.

For my money, Jumpchart’s best feature (other than online collaboration) is that after client and designer finalize the sitemap, it spits out valid CSS and XHTML to build your site design over. In case you didn’t catch that, that means for a large percentage of simple projects, you might not have to hire a developer/programmer. If a designer has a decent sense of information architecture knowledge, a client and designer could build a site together rather quickly (and most likely at a lower cost.)

Then again, some folks don’t want anyone (or anything) coding their CSS/XHTML. For everyone else, there’s Jumpchart.

Pre-Nine Inch Nails Trent Reznor, complete with synth-pop tunes in a band called Exotic Birds. Everyone has to start somewhere.

Your reclamation, then. Take heed, rise, and walk with me.

Ok, so imagine you’re an internet-famous, twenty-something, recently-made-millionaire who was even-more-recently (allegedly) fired by the largish media conglomerate who bought 51% of the now-successful new media company that you and three friends started in college. What do you do now? Apparently, you go find yourself a tutor.

Any Mac OS X Leopard users who are missing the Letterbox plugin for Mail.app should try WideMail. It installs easily, works great, and has some handy customization features.

Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.
— Jeffrey Zeldman, Understanding Web Design

Not only does Deuce Design have fantastic graphic design, branding, signage, environmental graphics, and typography work, they obviously have what looks to be a fun-having office environment.

Nothing says “we have fun” quite like luchador masks. And a big desk. Never underestimate the intangible quality that humor can bring to a company.

This article was helpful in getting MAMP (Apache, MySQL, and PHP) and WordPress set-up locally on my Mac so I can test WP themes and do development work offline. I know I should have done this about two years ago. It’s awesome.

I’m not one for gadget-lust, but Western Digital announced a 320GB version of their Passport external harddrive. That thing is crazy tiny (be sure to check out the photos) and doesn’t require an extra power cable, which is a glorious bonus in terms of actual portability. Consider this the first installment in my Christmas List.

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.
— Marcel Duchamp, French artist

Quote, “There’s no more straightforward expression of class inequity than the fact that I can use my disposable income and get treated better in a situation that is mandated and policed by our federal government…this falls squarely into the category of things [that] make you confront your privilege in an unsubtle way.”

Anil Dash waxes culturally philosophic in his unsolicited testimonial for the Clear Card, a $99 service designed for frequent travelers. Clear Card gets all your info beforehand at a private facility, which enables you to skip the line at airport security in certain airports in favor of an extremely fast private security screening via Clear employees.

Derek Powazek has resurrected true storytelling site Fray as a subscription-based quarterly magazine. The aspect of readers being able to respond to a story with their own true stories is conspicuously missing right now — it was such a huge part of the old Fray — but Derek says it’s on the way. Great site, fantastic content, and I love the overall bigness of the design/layout in regards to illustration and typography.

One of the new features in Apple’s Leopard OS is an RSS reader in Mail.app. This could be handy. So why does it take a massive effort to get it to work? Apple, do you expect me to manually input hundreds of feeds, one at a time? Where’s my “Import OPML File” button?