Skip to Content

Aqua-Trick Bob by Shukuno Rintendo

(Via good.is)

The pieces of plastic range in size from larger than 1 millimeter (39%) to .3 milimeters (10%) wide.

Through the Gyre by Good.is

Through the Gyre by Good.is

By now, most of us are aware that there is a large patch of floating plastic in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

See the full transparency

Good magazine has created one of their beautiful info-graphics detailing this sad environmental hazard we’ve manufactured.

These designed pieces are such an effective way to communicate important issues to our modern minds. We think with our eyes.

Nice Web Type likes Bello Pro and Proxima Nova →

An impressive demonstration of what is possible with CSS gradients and font embedding. The demo uses the upcoming Typekit service to serve up the font files.

If you want to try this yourself you should visit this demonstration showcasing the pleasant and free Museo font, along with instructions on how to use @font-face font embedding. There are also two further weights of the font available for about $30.

Andy Clarke Reviews Typekit →

A first look at the service that promises to bring embedded fonts to the web. From all appearances, this is going to be a really big deal.

Custom Data Attributes in HTML 5 →

If you’ve ever tried to store machine data in your html, you know it’s a pain. The HTML 5 draft gives us a clever solution: create your own arbitrary attributes prefixed with data-.

 <ol>
     <li data-length="2m11s">Beyond The Sea</li>
     ...
  </ol>

…a tidy mechanism that is also backwards compatible: browsers will ignore attributes they don’t recognize.

.webfont proposal →

A shrewd proposal for a web font embedding format. The basic idea: the .webfont file is a zip archive containing the font binaries and an info.xml with data about the font, including copyright data, etc.

We’re hopeful that this is a good format for everyone. It gives users smaller file sizes. It gives the font vendors a simple format that allows them to include information about the font. It doesn’t require entirely new technologies from the browser developers.

Zed Shaw on the GPL →

The discussion around the GPL continues with this thoughtful essay on why Mr. Shaw chooses the GPL and why he doesn’t mind when others don’t…

I really don’t care what license people use on their software, it’s their software and bitching at them for the license they choose is offensive. They wrote it, put their blood and sweat into it, and you should be glad that you get the privilege of even seeing it.

His observation reminds me of a personal principle I try to live by: make rules for yourself, not for others. Telling others to do things your way is usually arrogant and always a big waist of time. If you do not believe in the GPL, you may choose any license or contribute to any non-GPL project you wish. It’s a big world out there, with plenty of room for us all.

Disclaimer: there are a few choice pieces of colorful language in the essay, as above.

Constructive and creative first, deconstructive and critical second →

A law of life.

The Harvest by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Proverbs by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

The Fall of the Rebel Angels by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

The Thing That Hath Been is That Which Shall Be

The thing that hath been is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done. There is no new thing under the sun.

Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new? It hath been already of old time, which was before us.

There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.

The MET is a great jumping off point for more on the art Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Their site has a short bio and some essays about art of this period.

Pinboard →

Pinboard is basically what del.icio.us used to be: a minimal no-nonsense utility for managing bookmarks.

As Gruber points out, it has a clever one-time signup fee model:

(number of users * $0.001)

This model is a brilliant move for a little web startup.

  • It shows the developer is going to stick with it. Paying money for a service comes with an implication of commitment on the part of the developer.

  • It filters your users, leaving only people who care about the product.

    For example: I’m passionate about the attitude of utility and functionality that was behind the original del.icio.us service. The faux-minimalist, badly thought-out “re-design” of that service bugs me. Evidently it bothered Mr. Maciej enough to build a service, which basically makes us friends. Heck, I want to pay him a small reasonable fee for a service I appreciate.

  • It brings in lots of users, but not too many. As more users come to the service, the fee increases, giving me a great incentive to be an early adopter. As the fee increases, the number of new users will slow down to a trickle. This gives the developer time to cruise along with a fair-sized bunch of real customers, helping him focus on what real customers want. He also has time to iron out bugs and figure out how to scale.

  • It defrays initial development costs, and then some. This matters a lot when you’re bootstrapping a little startup. After your users flood in, you’ve got a reasonable chunk of change that you can use to focus on your project.

I payed $4.22 for my account, Mr. Gruber payed $2.91 for his yesterday. Evidently, Mr. Maciej’s idea is taking off.

Update: Alex King brought up one potential pitfall of this model in a conversation today. In the event that the developer can not attract enough customers to make the service self-sustaining (given whatever business model he puts in place after the initial buy-in period), he is left in unhappy situation of having to shut down the service. The one-time fee will not cover the recurring costs of hosting and upkeep forever. Of course, this would leave his once-passionate payed users feeling cheated and they would be likely to channel their passion in his direction. It should be noted that if you do not feel comfortable charging at least what it costs to create a product, you shouldn’t be creating the product in the first place.

Gestalt Principles of Perception – Common Fate →

Humans tend to perceive elements moving in the same direction as being more related than elements that are stationary or that move in different directions.

A great explanation and application of something we sense intuitively. This post is part of a series on Design Gestalts, which looks to be excellent. I’ve got some catch-up reading to do.

Smoke trails behind a sleek white space ship

? by John Berkey

A monstrous and sleek space ship hovers over water, disturbing the surface below.

? by John Berkey

Another gigantic ship coming to rest on the craggy surface of a moon-like planet

? by John Berkey

A battle scene from Star Wars, with many space fighters shooting at each other. The Death Star is in the background.

? by John Berkey

John Berkey

Lots more here. Hat tip, But Does it Float.

Update: check out this piece of concept art for Pixar’s Wall•E. The aesthetic of the film was obviously heavily influenced by John Birkey’s work, and its visual cousin, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

An Unofficial Q&A about the Discontinuation of the XHTML2 WG →

This clears up a lot of the higher-level questions I had.

Bas Jan Ader under a box propped up with a stick. He is having a formal tea party.

Tea Party by Bas Jan Ader

Bas Jan Ader in his boat. He later disappeared at sea.

In search of the miraculous by Bas Jan Ader

A grid structure devolves into crumpled waves at its base

Collapse by Brandon Morse

A photo of Bas Jan Ader on the verge of falling with his bicycle into a river, from his video Fall 2.

Fall II by Bas Jan Ader

The mushroom cloud over the Bikini atoll. There are little ships nearly getting swept away at its foot.

Fuller Pavilion by Buckminster Fuller

Dome over Manhattan by Buckminster Fuller

Spomenik 1 by Jan Kempenaers

Do we not feel the breath of empty space?

But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? #

Emily Lewis on hAtom →

A nice walkthrough on how to integrate the hAtom draft microformat into your blog. hAtom is at this point, a very robust draft. I use it on this blog and we’ve also integrated it into the Carrington Blog theme.