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This site is maintained by Stewart Butterfield: stewart@sylloge.com

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  Permalinks work again, thanks to Matt Haughey, the smartest person in the whole United States.




Friday, September 29

  <-- this is a permalink. Or is it? There is some funny IE business here.

1. Oppo-rant. Heh.
   
   
2. There is this ad on the radio that contains the line:

   Now you can have twice as much hair as you do right now.

   I don't have to tell you how annoying that is.
   
   
3. Call and reply:
   
   favorite reponse #1 —

   favorite reponse #2 — "Fuck me, aren't lorries brilliant?"
   
   

4. Strange HTML dyslexia. I keep closing all tags with "</a>"

  If You're Not a Socialist When You're 20 You Have No Heart
Yo, yo, yo. How does it end? If you're not a capitalist when you're 40, you have no brains. You know that one, right? I remember my conversion point quite vividly, though it is only in the last few years that I would really label myself a capitalist. What? Yes, that's right all my nose-ringed, dreadlocked, pothead friends (I mean that literally; not derogative at all), I am a capitalist. And, of course, you are wrong if you don't agree with me. (Though those of you who know me might as well skip this post since I've likely had this conversation with you already.)

When I read things like this or decline to participate in conversations like this, I find it incredibly frustrating. There is as little room for argument as there is in any ideological discourse and yet since we are all pragmatists (or consequentialists) now and since there are plenty of facts to argue about we could actually debate some of these issues.

But on the other hand, when there is disagreement on nearly every point, perhaps we don't share enough ground to avoid talking past each other. And it is mercilessly tedious.

The basic point seems to me to be something like this: born behind a veil of ignorance (not knowing where in the world you'd be born, nor into what situation), when you have liked to have been born? Now, right?

No? Because people all over the world are suffering? Ah, you'd rather be born in the age of chivalry? Or some idyllic tribal society? The renaissance? 50 years ago? —— Look, there are problems all over the world now, but those problems (taken together) are fewer and of less severity than they ever have been before.

Think about the difference between western Africa (an obvious place to point to as undesirable, vis-a-vis being born in a place) now and 200 years ago. The Congo today or under King Leopold? Sure, Russia is in terrible shape, but it's better than WWII, and better than it was before the serfs were emancipated. Starving in India with Bollywood, or back in the days of the Mogul wars? Birmingham ghettos today or in Dickens' time? Or in Elizabethan times where "tragedy of the commons" had a quite literal interpretation?

You may be tempted by the omnipresent myth of the a perfect past (why is this present in pretty much every culture?), the noble savage, our fall from the garden, and on and on and on. But of course, that is a myth. While it may have been pleasant to be a Lord in feudal Germany, a Pharoah or a Sultan, the king of Timbuktu, or the Emporor of China, chances are 99 in a 100 that you'd be born into those times and places as a slave, a serf, a servant, a toiler, a peon, drafted to fight capriciously, having no teeth by the time you were 30 (granted you lived that long), with some music but no literature, no philosophy (save for a few simplified combined cosmogony/theologies), no summers off, raped and pillaged, forced to billet soldiers, starving when the weather's bad, uneducated, burned for heresy and beaten for disobedience — not much point in extended this list since a full catalog of human suffering through the ages would fill volumes ...

Of course we wouldn't rather be a pig satisfied than Socrates dissatisfied and yet somehow believe that living as a part of an old indigineous society would be so incredibly spiritually fulfilling that it would easily outweigh the material lack or missing access to the worlds of history, art, science that are available in the public libraries even to Main Street crackheads.

There is no disagreement that parts of the world today are worse off than there were at certain points in the past, but on the whole, averaged out and playing the odds, if you wouldn't rather been born in 2000 than in 1500 or 1000 or 1000 BC or 5000 BC then you are just dumb. Having the opportunity to learn, take leisure, choose your vocation (or even have a decent chance of surviving childhood) used to a luxury affored to one person in a hundred worldwide. Now we are perhaps at twenty in a hundred; long way to go, but this is generally the right direction.

OK, so why this diatribe? People act as if we are at a crisis point, as the precence of too many advertisements is really a horror comparable to ... well, as if it was a "horror" at all. As if the present system has done so much damage that it must be torn down, smashed and we have to start again. As if low-paying jobs in the service industry aren't better than farming the Yangtze (flood and famine, baby). As if Monsanto is worse than the East India Company or poverty in a half-assed welfare state is worse than poverty in a plutocracy.

AND YES I REALIZE THAT THERE ARE TERRIBLE PROBLEMS TODAY (you idiots). Understand that I am no advocate of complacency. I am aware of not doing enough personally (though charity starts at home and I am generous in spite of my self-absorbtion) and I recognize that activism is essential to achieving the ends that we all so reasonably desire: the end of hunger, the equalization of opportunity, sustainable resource use, the perpetuation and refinement of medicine, etc. I just think that our course needs to be altered rather than abandoned.

But the thing that really gets to me is that people who are obviously intelligent, people who I agree with on matters of taste and culture, who I personally admire and whose company I enjoy, can hold such crazy political beliefs. On the one hand we have the belief that business is necessarily, essentially evil and that people with more than some certain amount of money are ipso facto likewise wicked and cruel. Can't you see that this (a) is factually wrong and (b) just creates another "us" and "them" distinction from which to draw demons, blame and target? On the other hand, we get the complements: that people who have bad lives all have bad lives because of circumstances beyond their control.

People rich and poor can be petty, can commit themselves to being miserable to spite [whoever], kill themselves to show their parents or spouses or children, are violent, coercive or theiving. People rich and poor raise their kids poorly and resent their parents, putting "being right" above making amends and emotional health. People rich and poor devote themselves to mindless activities at the expense of intellectual curiousity, have spectacular moral failings, lack the discipline to create the lives they want.

So, please, when you get to thinking about the malaise of our age, or the commercialization of x and the breakdown of y, about who's to blame for what, think a little bit about how far we've come: how slavery and servitude have only barely ended; how, though suffrage is still not truly universal, it is far closer than ever before; how freedoms unimaginable to our great-grandparents are taken for granted all over the world; how the Thames is no longer flammable and extinctions are now illegal; how much less possible a world war seems; how the freeing of markets and trade (though not without its pain) has spread prosperity far wider than ever in history.

And don't let me stop you from changing the world. I'll even join in and support you, as long as you don't think that economics is a zero sum game and that constructing faceless enemies is a productive means to accomplishing anything. As long as you understand where responsibility always lives.

Too tired to edit and make coherent. Tomorrow there will be some other reason ...




Thursday, September 28

  Unrelated: Winners of the Foil the Filters Contest and did you know that you can change text size (on Win/IE 5 at least) with a mouse wheel — hold down the CTRL key and spin away (I just noticed this by accident). Awesome. If only it worked on px-specified css declarations.




Wednesday, September 27

  Do you hate it when you think of something clever to say a little too late? I do too. I have a similar problem sometimes which goes like this: I think of the clever thing to say right away but then forget to say it. When I said "say it" just then, I meant "write it".

Anyway, uh, "Speaking of luncheons, I had lunch with Suzanne Carter-Jackson last week for no other reason than it is fun to meet different people. And it was fun." Yeah, speaking of luncheons ... Oh, never mind.

  Halcyon's let's agree to disagree. I wish I wrote that (via eatonweb). I'd add "so there" but then I guess the purpose would be undermined if not totally defeated.




Tuesday, September 26

  fresh new geegaw again. Where does it end?




Oh wait, I remember.




Monday, September 25

  While in sunny Pasadena, I recommend the Equator Café. Slightly less of a non-sequitur: hopefully something fantastic will finally happen this week. (Actually, I guess I hope that something fantastic will happen every week, and to everyone, but I have a specific and reasonable expectation that something fantastic will happen this week to me and various people I like.) Sequitur! Sequitur! Sequor? Expectations are a big thing on my mind right now, design-wise. How to create frames of expecation so you can actually satisfy people, or surprise them, or build tension or minimize time-wasting poor choices and so on. There are practical and aesthetic applications of expectation creation, which will be discussed in due course.

In unrelated "news" I've been writing an email to someone for so long now that it is hard to finish. That happens to you, sometimes, I bet.




Saturday, September 23

  0 more sleeps. You are done for.




Friday, September 22

  A month ago, I went to MetaFilter after not having gone for about a week or maybe a little more. I was kind of shocked to see that there were 85 links and 754 comments posted since my last visit.

The day before yesterday, after forgetting my username at a different site, I was reminded that I had signed up with more than one name at MetaFilter (I was at work and couldn't remember which one I'd used). I tried logging in with that account (after about seven months of non-use) and I was more shocked to see:

18,504 comments. Now, I know that I didn't read all of those (probably well less than a quarter) but that is still amazing. And it made me think. MF is only one of two dozen sites that I check fairly reguarly. That is a lot. WOW! I SPEND WAY TO MUCH TIME ONLINE!

This is not recent. In the early days it was usenet and email (always the internet for me, never a BBS at all). Then there was a little gopher and WAIS in the mix. But then there was the web, and still, usenet and email. Then, even a little irc, lots more web and lots more email. Then there was huge amounts of email, hours and hours on the web, icq in the background occasionally. That continues.

I live an hour and half from Whistler & Blackcomb and bought a ski rack this year, but only got to the mountain once. I didn't go camping at all this summer. No road trips. Within a two hour radius is some of the most beautiful coastline in the world and mountains all over the place.

I'm indoors way too much, but I'm not reading enough (books) or getting enough sleep. I get anxious about checking mail after 12 hours away. This isn't cool; if I am going to work on the web, I've got to get some other hobbies.

So, uh, nothing.

  The China National Light Industrial Products Imp. & Exp. Corp., Tainjin Branch takes away my choices in every season

The first two are thumbnails for high-res versions (175K and 176K respectively). Print and clip for attractive greeting card covers.




Wednesday, September 20

  The Bovine Inversus Experience currently features handy recaptioned propoganda (though I let this sit too long and it not at the top anymore; early post, late publish). It is handy for looking at.

  Truly a Cloud:

... and I check news sites for headlines each time I connect -- The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and others. As the page downloads and the HTML tables render, as the progress bar fills across the bottom of the browser window, I invariably think, has a nuclear war begun?

  What do you think of that? I love Google, by the way.




Tuesday, September 19

  Interesting thoughts on the betterment of a graphic design icon ("icon" in the Russian painting sense).

  This site is. Interested In getting the largest number? Of people, who might be interested? In something, getting a chance to see! What might interest them?




Sunday, September 17

  So my car window was also smashed, but it was only midnight and it cut the night short. Also nothing taken (though when I was cleaning up I noticed a big bag of valuables in the in-between-the-seat compartment which I guess I had forgotten about). Stupid junkies.

I don't even bother to call the police and since I'm pretty sure the cost of the window is less than my insurance deductible, I'm going to try to avoid wasting a day with the insurance company.

The upside, such as it is, came in the form of an unintended artifact: a piece of the window held together by a sticker. Cool patterns in the safety glass; a new bit of junk to clutter up my house. Everybody's dancing in a ring around the sun. See?

It would be more convenient if they could arrange to break into one's car during business hours so you could just go get it fixed straight away rather than have to wait until glass shops are open. (Last time was worse: it was winter, a whole big window was gone and it happened on December 23rd, just in time for a four day string of holidays and I had to go out of town. Though, to be sure, there are worse things.)




Saturday, September 16

  Mr. Cranky writes in:

So... every week I come back to Sylloge for a dose of what's happening in your life... and I have to say, the whole thing is starting to make me a bit nauseous.

Week after week, reports of yet another trip, yet another grand idea, yet another dose of the wonderful opportunities afforded to you.

Yet week after week you never seem to do anything. Isn't your Grand Tour long over?

If you have such amazing opportunities, why don't you use them to do more than circle jerk with a bunch of bloggers? If you have such grand ideas, why don't you do more than publish them to your friends and family?

Stand up from the computer. Go out the door. Do something that makes the world a better place for someone other than you.

Then I'll be really interested in what you have to say.

And yes, you can post this to your site. (Hey, you're the one that made your life public.)

Well, that's something to think about. I've always been pretty conscious of the "significance" (or more typically the lack of) of whatever it is I'm doing; probably the main reason I got out of academia. I have plenty of liberal guilt to go along with my inherent jewish guiltyness and I don't like the idea that I'm getting more than my share or not contributing to the greater good (not going to be joining Medecins Sans Frontieres any time soon though.)

But I have been doing some good. I hooked lots of people up (particularly in the job, reference & money departments) and there a few things that I don't talk about here which are good. I can't honestly say that I'm doing my best, but I will be soon. Some changes just take a long time to think through. Or I'm scared or lazy or something.




Friday, September 15

  God knows why I feel compelled to label miscellaneous things as miscellaneous.

Mo' Miscellany
An interesting article on Patrick O'Brian: the Final Chapter. There is no arguing about the fact that he was the greatest historical novelist of all time (and certainly among the most accomplished irrespective of genre). Too bad he wasn't really Irish and a spy.
See also Compendium of Patrick O'Brian resources on the web.

My favorite recent spam subject line: Get Paid to Win Money — the only thing they're missing is a whole bunch of exclaimation points.

I had no idea that Alan Turing also did work on Morphogenesis, but there it is. Collected Works of A.M. Turing: Volume 3: Morphogenesis

I was back in Victoria, my old home place. While I was there, I hung out with the guys in the band and, like I do a few times every year, I was thinking about not playing music anymore and how lives change. I used to consider playing music a behaviour which was constitutive of who I was; perhaps the definitive characteristic. But I really haven't played much in the last nine years. It still surprises me away that the two friends I once taught how to play are now better than I ever was. S'funny. Anyway, this band is half descended from the band I used to play with. Their new album is good (I'll get them to put it on mp3.com and post a link) though still nothing like a show. This song, called Windows really typifies the kind of good-time west coast hippie music that was one of the core genres. It makes me think of my tribe, or, uh, whatever.




Wednesday, September 13

  Two more things: thanks to everyone who has written in about me knowing what I want. And, look, the Danish 5k Contest has now posted some entries. I haven't looked through them all yet, but I like BATTLEBOX and Simpelt stjernekort.

  Lest we forget that the surfaces of the city host the millions of "blogs" maintained by the artists and other insane parties, here is another example of the genre bizarre rant on paper (this one found by my friend Rob) which can be seen everywhere, if you really look. Everyone wants to be heard. Someday I'll put all the ones I've found together into something.

Also, Some Clarification
When I say "drugs" should be "legal" (literally non-sensical, I suppose) I mean that possession of those drugs should be decriminalized. I would also prefer that the business of distributing those drugs was strictly regulated (perhaps even under the control of the state, though the idea of a self-protecting bureaucracy developing around the sale of herion isn't attractive) and that the resources currently wasted on "The War on Drugs" were diverted to more useful things (including free, widely available and well-staffed detox, rehabilition and treatment centers and other forms of harm reduction).

And when I say that "I'm skeptical about the utility of considering anything intellectual to be property", I'm playing the idealist just a little. I recognize copyright law in some (preferably limited form) as a necessary evil. For the time being anyway ...




Tuesday, September 12

  Knowing What I Want
If I had any one of the attractive options I have open to me now three years ago, I would have just been overjoyed. There would have been no indecision and I would have started it whatever it is that I'm doing next a few months ago.

But now, when I have all of the options I can't make any decisions at all. I've spent about five months trying to decide what city/continent I want to live in/on and I really haven't gotten anywhere. It's as if I was still in need of some information, like there was some evidence I was missing or something else that had to be investigated before I could proceed — there's not, that's bullshit and I know it.

All I have to do is make a choice. I can't possibly know everything which might help me decide. I have enough information: if I'm missing anything, I'm missing conviction. But I still have the unshakable compulsion to maximize future utility, just like I did then. The difference is I'm starting to be able to articulate what matters to me, at least professionally. Here's an excerpt from a letter I just wrote someone:

I've found that most consultancies which do just web development and design (i) have too many inexperienced, unschooled and marginally talented employees and (ii) believe their own bullshit too much. I just can't take 90%+ of the talk about user experience and information architecture and their cross-products; it's hive-mind-driven, pretentious and empty. (The left-over bit is usually quite interesting and getting somewhere.)

... Part of what I'm looking for is a place where there are people who are better/smarter/more experienced than me, where I can learn and where there is some kind of tradition and theoretical framework for doing design. (For just the same reasons why it is more fun to play music with people who are better than you.)

I've worked in interaction design for major web projects for the last two years and have spend five years working on web development and design including the management thereof (and I'm smart) so I don't mean that I want a junior role necessarily; I just want colleagues who are as good as they could possibly be and an eye towards the long view and what true excellence is in web/internet application products design.

Also, here is some of my great art, entitled Nearly Aperiodic Mario Bros Side-Walking Crab Pattern. ("Great art" is tongue in cheek.) (Damn, why did I have to go and ruin that?)




Sunday, September 10

  Sickness Unto Health
The triple-punch ebola-grippe-ague infirmity which has ailed me for the last week or so seems to have been defeated by the mighty marching armies of Neutrophils, Monocytes, Lymphocytes, Eosinophils and Basophils which course through my vital life-serum. My malady was either caused by or itself caused (a team of natural philosophers is presently working out the this and that relating to the direction of causal flow) an imbalance in the humours, manifest as me (me! the eternal paragon of sanguinity) being battered about on a dipole, from phlegmatic to melancholic and back again.

Of course, the only cure (as it is the cure for anything) is to have one's blood let. However, these days, I can't even give my blood away because I lived in England and we are concerned about bovine spongiform encephalitis, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and that sort of thing. Bullocks bollocks! Nothing is safer (nor more satisfactorily satiating and prodgiously nourishing) as beef itself. But the point is that I'm not quite so sick anymore. Ta da!




Saturday, September 9

  Via san630, I found the German 7kb wettbewerb (competition), a 5k-inspired contest. I don't have a problem with them taking the idea (even if they don't credit the original). But I don't like it that they just directly translated the stuff I wrote and didn't credit me. Compare:

• 5k FAQ
• 7kb FAQ (translated at the slow go.com, at least until someone can tell me how to direct link to AV's version)
  
  

In general, I'm skeptical about the utility of considering anything intellectual to be property, I'm ambivalent about copyrights and I hope that, in the long term, the interconnectedness of everything makes intellectual property law impotent (I've even gone overboard arguing about the ethics of "copying" layouts). At the same time, I still don't like someone just copying my text without acknowledgement.

  Spontaneously, a few old friends and I drove down to Seattle last weekend for the annual ginormous (sp?) arts festival Bumbershoot. Like the last time I went to Bumbershoot, it was way too crowded (more than 250,000 people over the four days) and I didn't get to see the performances I was most interested in, but the spectacle was fun (and the food delicious)

Since I was right there anyway, I also checked out the Experience Music Project which was exciting to me more for the building than for anything else. After having seen Gehry's Guggenheim I was a little dissapointed. While the building was well integrated in its situation, it didn't look like much from the human scale except for at a few points (unlike the Guggenheim where one of the best parts was walking around and watching the building change from different perspectives). More importantly, the interior shape wasn't as interesting or dramatic as the exterior (again, unlike the Guggenheim) though there were a few great spots.

They had WinCE-based interactive guides, which basically sucked (too slow, too confusing) but which looked very chic. And I couldn't figure out the kiosks at all, even though (coincidentally) I got an overview straight from the project's producer at plumbdesign in NYC just a few weeks earlier.

Overall though the exhibits were well done. I didn't get to see everything (even though you probably could in a good 6-hour session — just didn't have time). I'd say it's worth going to. but I wouldn't go all the way to Seattle just to see it.

  How America Dictates the Global War on Drugs: a series of articles published in the Ottawa Citizen (and simultaneously in other Southam/Hollinger papers like the Vancouver Sun which I've actually been buying because of this). The tides must be turning at least a little when arguments like this get published in a Conrad Black media outlet (that deal is still going through — perhaps they are feeling the Izzy Asper influence already?

• Here is the first article: Why the War on Drugs Has Failed and an index to the whole series (updated as new articles are published — we are about halfway through the series now).

  Misc.

• marvel at the cruel elegance of twernt.com; and laugh out loud at the concise history of the world (scroll down). (And if you haven't yet seen the about page, have a look.)
• I ate at Diva at the Met the other night. Their chef, Michael Noble, went up against Noda Minoru Iron Chef Morimoto in Battle Potato on Iron Chef. I enjoyed a derivative dish: potato and smoked salmon cake, encrusted with beluga caviar, accompanied by a micro salad with salmon roe. O — I can't describe it; call ahead and ask for it (it's not on the menu).
  Update: correction of chefs' names courtesy of Mr. Bill — ha! — Mr. Bill Stillwell of marginalia.org.
• Have you ever really looked at those dragon- and damselfly pictures at the Honeyguide Web Log? So very beautiful.

Here are some of the other things on this site:

The 5k contest
This year's contest is now open for entries. Help collectively correct for my laziness by telling everyone you know.

Stephen Toulmin's 1979 Ryerson Lecture at the University of Chicago, The Inwardness of Mental Life, reprinted with the kind permission of the Author & the University.

An excerpt from an interview with philosopher Donald Davidson, which I find complements the former.

A motion study where you can see all the frames of an animation at once, but also still see the animation.

Some pictures of my friend Paul spinning around in some art, which is really a machine.

Some pictures of Illuminares, Vancouver's annual latern festival.

Some pictures of The Symphony of Fire, Vancouver's annual fireworks competition.

A video from my second trip to Vegas in the year 2000. Sad, that.

And more, to be dusted off.