Chasing My Own Tale
If you like the products at Design Within Reach you’ll love the video The American Look.
It’s a love letter to the mid-century designer… pardon me, “Stylist” with all of the bombastic pronouncements that you might expect from a corporate-sponsored documentary from 1958. It’s just about a half hour long and minutes 26 and 27 are the retro-futuist scenes, but the whole thing is a real Modernist treat.
Take a look at the time lapse for the Rocket Science installation. Pretty dramatic clouds at the end… Ask E.T.: ET video work on YouTube
CatNip is a program which, while running, detects “cat-like typing” and locks the keyboard, usually in under a half second. Optionally, CatNip will fade your desktop and display a warning message to your cat (which is of dubious value, since if your cat can read, your cat can probably type, too).
For some reason, this has become an important part of my software toolbox…
Jock wrote Dear Television Networks and noted:
In fact it seems that all you guys are willing to do just about anything, except the one thing the consumers really want. We want to buy the shows, and watch them commercial free whenever and where ever we want. We want to be your customers.
Jock, You know this isn’t how the economics work. Advertisers pay WAY more money than viewers will ever pay for the content of the shows. Even longtailing the shows, the productions companies would have to have some sort of up front ROI in order to stay in business.
But advertisers are willing to spend LOTS of money to ‘borrow’ our eyeballs. They don’t understand that (poorly done) commercials are less effective than they think. One day advertisers might get a clue, but only after all the ad agencies sales staff have been rounded up and put to pasture…
Each year I end up revisiting this post from the Electric Vehicle Archive for October 2000:
“I was in 2nd gear as I eased my foot to the floor, taking us right to the adhesion limits of the tires as we cornered through the bend in the road.”
John Bryan’s post is a continuing inspiration for a goal that will come one day.
This is a House Bill 2702 that was approved by the State of Oregon:
Relating to written documents produced by agencies of state government.
(2) Every agency of state government shall ensure that written documents produced by the agency for purposes of communicating with the public, whether presented on paper or through electronic media, conform to plain language standards.
It seems almost… revolutionary! Good on Oregon. Washington’s governor did something similar, (by fiat) last year. However, the Oregon was bill was approved by the House, Senate, and the Governor. I can’t help but think that this might be the way to start making everything more accessible to the layman. At the very least it’s a start.
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