What’s going on with LinkedIn these days?
Can someone tell me what value it brings to the site by allowing people to like and comment on alerts that your connections have updated their profiles?
Are there seriously people out there with enough free time on their hands that after they’re done trolling through Facebook they go over to LinkedIn and say, “Ooooh look! Jimmy updated his Experience to include ‘wasting work hours watching the World Cup.’ I LIKE that! I’m going to click the LIKE link. Big ups, Jimmy! You da man!”
You’re not even seeing the actual Profile update on this screen either. So how are you going to react to something you need to drill down into to understand?

I’m all about the cross-pollination of ideas between different industries and trades, but some things just aren’t appropriate.

From John Kricfalusi’s blog (aka John K, creator of Ren & Stimpy):

Some people might wonder what the point is in copying the drawings of others. I’ll tell you. It’s so you can apply what you learned from the copies to your own drawings. It’s not just so you can be good at copying.

I was obsessed Ren & Stimpy back in the early/mid 1990’s when I was in high school. When class projects came up, no matter the subject – physiology, English, chemistry, math – I would create big comic books narrated by Ren & Stimpy. Art and drawing were my entry point into topics I would otherwise be too bored to learn about.
At first it might sound as if I was taking the easy road by creating comic books in all my classes, and while it did come naturally to me, it was still a lot of work.
Before I started a sketchbook, I would first draft up the story I wanted to tell in my comic book. From there I would determine which character I wanted to say what, and what expression/pose they would be making when they delivered those lines.
I transferred these characters in the comic books was by first recording all the episodes and then playing them back on my VCR (yes, I said VCR) and pausing it at the moment Ren or Stimpy made a unique, hilarious expression so that I could draw the image in my sketchbook. If you’ve ever watched the show, you know these moments happened every other second.
(My father would yell at me when he caught me doing this because he said it ruined the tape heads on the VCR. He’s and an engineer and that’s a story for another time.)

Moving Beyond Copying

Back to John K’s quote. Copying is crucial to learning. Whether you’re copying someone’s cartoon characters, CSS files, poster design, acting or music you eventually reach a point of departure. I believe it was Picasso who said that that point of departure, that screw-up in what you copied – that is your voice.
Since my goal was never to become a cartoonist, i never moved beyond copying Ren & Stimpy off of the television, but copying has played a big part in my work as a designer. Whether it’s been code, or style or methodology the first step for any artist or designer is copying.
Once you’ve full absorbed and become one with the subject it’s a natural progression to alter it and make it your own.

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle:

In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states by precise inequalities that certain pairs of physical properties, like position and momentum, cannot simultaneously be known to arbitrary precision. That is, the more precisely one property is known, the less precisely the other can be known. In other words, the more you know the position of a particle, the less you know about its velocity, and the more you know about the velocity of a particle, the less you know about its instantaneous position.

This principle is like a woman, I don’t understand much of it, but it intrigues me.

Man do love the Beastie Boys and I always will (It’s like what Chris Rock said – whatever music you were listening to when you started getting laid, you’re gonna love that music for the rest of your life). I was sad when I heard Adam Yauch (MCA) has cancer.
Then I got pissed when I found out his moron plan to beat it:

“We are visualizing taking the energy away from the cancer, and then sending it back at the cancer as lightning bolts that will break apart the DNA and RNA of the cells,” he added. “If you have the time, please join us in whipping up this lightening storm. Mind over matter …”

Seriously MCA, what the fuck. I got news for you, meditation is not going to kill your cancer. Regardless, I wish you the best and I hope you prove me wrong.

From the Telegraph:

They set up a controlled experiment in Punjab earlier this year comparing the behavior and productivity of bees in two hives – one fitted with two mobile telephones which were powered on for two fifteen minute sessions per day for three months. The other had dummy models installed.

And:

After three months the researchers recorded a dramatic decline in the size of the hive fitted with the mobile phone, a significant reduction in the number of eggs laid by the queen bee. The bees also stopped producing honey.

Via Analogue

From ScienceDaily:

The stimulatory effects of caffeine may be nothing more than an illusion, according to new research that shows there is no real benefit to be gained from the habitual morning cup of coffee.

I’ve noticed when I’m out of my normal workday routine, like on a vacation, I get headaches from what seems to be coffee withdrawals. Then I find myself a cup of coffee and boom – headache is gone.

Via Creative Review:

The free app, called StreetMuseum, has been developed with creative agency Brothers and Sisters and makes use of geo tagging and Google Maps to guide users to various sites in London where, via the iPhone screen, various historical images of the city appear …

Awesome. It’s also a natural evolution of the Flickr group A Look Into the Past that was made it’s way around the blogs earlier this year (via Johnny Juice):

And according to Laughing Squid, A Look Into the Past was inspired by Michael Hughes’ “Souvenir” photoset on Flickr:

What a great chain of influence.

Vonnegut: How To Write With Style

The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was Conrad’s third language, and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench.

Vonnegut’s advice is great and echos advice I’ve heard about/from other writers like Hemingway and Stephen King.
The pieces of advice that have helped me the most have been on keeping things simple and writing like myself. No matter the size of the post on this site, I usually reread them at least 5-10 times, each time paying attention to where I can eliminate redundancies and gain more clarity in the idea being conveyed.

The name was suggested by Ginn’s brother, artist Raymond Pettibon, who also designed the band’s logo: a stylized black flag represented as four black bars. Pettibon stated “If a white flag means surrender, a black flag represents anarchy.” Their new name was reminiscent of the anarchist symbol, the insect spray of the same name, and of the British heavy metal group Black Sabbath, one of Ginn’s favorite bands. Ginn suggested that he was “comfortable with all the implications of the name.” The band spray painted the simple, striking logo all over Los Angeles, gaining attention from potential supporters, and thoroughly irritating police. Pettibon also created much of their cover artwork.

via Wikipedia

Hints, previews and sneak peeks.
They go hand-in-hand with prototypes, demos and proof-of-concept products.
These impossible-to-buy, incomplete, vaporware products – coupled with speculations – form the bulk of technology news. It’s bullshit is what it is.
Here are a few recent ones I like:
Yahoo, Nokia to unveil ‘Project Nike’ deal – Yahoo announces an alliance with Nokia. Wow. Screenshots? Mobile apps to demo? Nothing? Amazing stuff guys.
Microsoft Cancels Innovative Courier Tablet Project – Microsoft first leaks videos featuring a concept product, and then cancels it about 6 months later. Nice.
NVIDIA hints webOS tablet, rags on Apple and Intel – The title says it all. All talk, no walk.
This is just one of the many reasons Jory Kruspe and I started HEED (It’s one of my reasons anyway). HEED is about the process that creates well-designed products. It’s about how something that’s well-designed can improve the quality of life. It’s about pointing out places in world where there’s bad design and why businesses and individuals need to wake up and heed to design.
I’m not saying not to dream. I’m saying do something with those dreams. Make something. Find a process that allows you to execute your ideas. And when you find that process, use it.
The articles mentioned above are all (potentially) great ideas, but a design isn’t successful unless it’s executed.
That’s why Jory and I started HEED as Twitter and Flickr accounts. We both are busy with our jobs and haven’t been able to put aside the time to create the picture-perfect venture we’ve envisioned in our heads. So we’re starting with a seed.
Hey, at least we’re starting.

Art is a jealous mistress, and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860
via Laphams Quarterly