Noise Between Stations

September 2004

  • We like you, too

    •

    1 min read

    SFGate ran a great interview with David Neeleman, CEO of JetBlue. It’s an honest look at his failure in university, his Mormon upbringing, and his take on fundamental airline operations. I recently noticed with delight their new ad campaign, We like you, too (contrast this with Google’s Do no evil. It’s a different stance that…

  • Alexander and Eisenman

    •

    1 min read

    Katarxis reprints this wonderful 1982 debate between Christopher Alexander and Peter Eisenman, Contrasting Concepts of Harmony in Architecture. Here’s Alexander being snarky: It’s very interesting to have this conversation. If this weren’t a public situation, I’d be tempted to get into this on a psychiatric level. This whole issue of Katarxis feels like a Christopher…

  • Design is not art

    •

    1 min read

    …so says the Cooper-Hewitt, in their new exhibition “presenting virtually unknown designs from some of the most significant artists.” Why artists and not designers I’m not sure, but it looks like a good show. September 10 – February 27. Link courtesy of MUG.

  • Build a CMS, go to heaven

    •

    1 min read

    Brian Alvey, speaking on a panel about CSS back at SXSW, asked, “Who’s building a CMS on these tools that spits out valid markup? Not many. A few. They’re going to heaven.” Well, I don’t exactly believe in heaven, but to play it safe I wrote an article illustrating a few different ways you could…

  • Hacking Congress

    •

    1 min read

    In this inaugural article of Paul Ford’s new column, Hacking Congress, he introduces his plan to create an RDF description of the U.S. federal government… If you’ve been following Paul’s ideas for the semantic web, you can imagine the potential of this one.

  • IA meetup in NYC

    •

    1 min read

    My man Anders started a NYC IA Meetup, first meeting tomorrow night.

  • Imagining the Aeron bed

    •

    2 min read

    Ulrike and I had a brief discussion about the thermal properties of our Tempur-Pedic mattress today (summary: great overall, but it seems somehow hotter in the summer than other mattresses) and I said for hot climates it’d be nice to have an Aeron bed. It would have a supporting mesh material that would let air…

  • IA Geek Weekend

    •

    1 min read

    I’m so looking forward to the Future of Information Architecture retreat. It’s two days of listening, talking, eating, drinking, walking through the woods and along the beach, with a little partying thrown in for good measure. I’ll be facilitating a session to create design patterns, a group exercise exploring how each of us approaches design…

  • Google! Don’t eat no babies

    •

    1 min read

    Paul Ford: The Banality of Google. I’d really like to excerpt the last paragraph here as he had me laughing so hard. But I don’t want to spoil it for you.

  • If you can find some craftsmen I’ll hire them

    •

    1 min read

    Just finished ready Tom Wolfe’s From Bauhaus to Our House, a wonderful, powerful critique of modern architecture. At one point he describes how the International Style was killing demand for craftmanship, replacing Beaux-Arts architecture with glass boxes. …to those who complained that International Style buildings were cramped, had flimsy walls inside as well as out,…