Bill Cunningham New York, a film by Richard Press:

The “Bill” in question is 80+ New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham. For decades, this Schwinn-riding cultural anthropologist has been obsessively and inventively chronicling fashion trends and high society charity soirées for the Times Style section in his columns “On the Street” and “Evening Hours.” Documenting uptown fixtures (Wintour, Tom Wolfe, Brooke Astor, David Rockefeller–who all appear in the film out of their love for Bill), downtown eccentrics and everyone in between, Cunningham’s enormous body of work is more reliable than any catwalk as an expression of time, place and individual flair. In turn, Bill Cunningham New York is a delicate, funny and often poignant portrait of a dedicated artist whose only wealth is his own humanity and unassuming grace.

I love documentaries, I love photography, I love New York, and this looks great.

A Brief History of Title Design

From the NY Post:

The term “walled gardens” refers to a service or technology that restricts access only to those using that service, as is the case with Apple’s iTunes, in which music can only be played on Apple devices or through iTunes itself.

What the hell are they talking about? Apple has been selling music as DRM-free MP3’s since April 2009. I can play my tracks on any computer I want.
A more accurate slam would have been Apple’s DRM-protected video content.

I couldn’t pass this up (via SciFi Wire):

This has been sitting in my Instapaper queue forever:

When one becomes obsessed with a beautiful object, it isn’t because we want that object to come into our own personal world. It’s in fact the reverse. We want to enter its world. Of course, that thing that we found to be so beautiful at first glance may actually have some awful flaws. Really expensive yet excruciatingly uncomfortable shoes come to mind. We want it to work out so badly.

Many people think the electric car is a new development in transportation, but the picture above shows Thomas Edison next to an electric car built by S.R. Bailey & Company that he developed his nickel-iron batteries for.
The photo was taken around 1910 (New York Times article on the event).
Over one hundred years ago. Not horses. Not bicycles. Electric cars that had a range of 100 miles.
Here’s a film from 1900 showing a parade of automobiles that include steam and electric models.
With the weight of the emerging global oil economy behind it, internal combustion automobiles eventually surpassed their electric counterparts in speed, range and price in the 1910’s.
Very little is ever mentioned on how the electric car was killed off, but in his book, Internal Combustion, Ewan Black explains in detail ‘How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives’.
One can imagine living in a very different world today if electric automobile and battery technology were not prematurely stopped over 100 years ago.
This was not the only time in history the electric car was prevented from making progress. In his 2006 film, Who Killed the Electric Car? writer and director Chris Paine examines the creation and subsequent destruction of the electric car in the mid 1990’s.
It’s important for people to not just be aware that something happened, but why something happened the way it did. It’s easy to dismiss electric cars in the 1910’s as not economically viable or as mature a technology as gas-powered cars, but imagine if Edison were allowed to continue his pursuit of the electric battery technology. Imagine if his Edison Plant in Orange, New Jersey didn’t mysteriously get destroyed in a fire (even though most the buildings were concrete and Edison claimed they were fire-proof).

I’m going into my second year with Roundarch and with the end of 2009 comes our annual reviews.
When managers conduct our annual reviews, they project our ‘one sheet’ on the wall for all the other managers to see. The point is to be creative, whether you’re a designer or not. I wrote about my first one sheet last year.
This year I decided to base it on the oldey timey WANTED posters, but update it and make it a more edgy and add some technological flourishes like the QR code (which actually works if you download a QR Code reader app for your iPhone, Blackberry or Android unit).

Designers like to consider themselves badasses when in reality the only thing they usually push around are pixels.
Guilty as charged.

Sherlock Holmes was a really good movie. It helps that I’m a fan of Robert Downey and ‘bad good guys’ that he plays (and happens to be off camera). I’m also happy to see that Guy Richie (Snatch, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) might be back on his A-game now that he’s ditched Madonna.
Film aside, one of my favorite parts was the closing credits, done by Prologue Films. They were comprised of sort cuts from the movie that transitioned into beautiful sketches on parchment paper, complete with stains, smudges and ink blotches.
Simply gorgeous.







Check the video on YouTube.

Delayed post – the boys over at Analogue launched this site a few months ago for the artist Ben Wisch.
Simple, elegant and immersive.
As usual.
Nice work guys.

I was catching up on a few of the TED Conference podcast videos this weekend, one of which was, Steven Cowley: Fusion is energy’s future. It’s a great (and scary) presentation on why nuclear fusion will be one of our only solutions to the fossil fuel crisis. One part that grabbed my attention was where he he explained one of the easiest methods of creating a fusion reaction:

There is one reaction, that’s probably one of the easiest fusion reactions to do. It’s between two isotopes of hydrogen – deuterium …and tritium. These two nucleii, when they’re far apart, are charged. And you push them together and they repel …but when you get them close enough together, something called the Strong Force starts to act and pulls them together. So most the time they repel, but you get them closer and closer and closer and at some point the Strong Force grips them together.

That sounded like a great metaphor for some relationships I know, but prior to the fusion clip, I watched James Geary, metaphorically speaking, so maybe that had something to do with it.

Just a little snippet I shot over the holidays en route to see my nieces and nephews. The video camera on the iPhone 3G S is really handy.

Talk about simplicity with a grid. The website for A24 is absolutely beautiful.
found via Navistd

It seems like every successful person I learn about now fits into the pattern that Malcolm Gladwell highlights in his book, Outliers, which is:
timing + talent + insane amounts of practice = rich & successful
It’s like when you buy a car, and then you see that model everywhere you go. I see the outliers pattern everywhere since reading that book.
And so it is after having just watched It Might Get Loud down at the Sunshine Theatre on Houston Street. I know Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White are extremely talented musicians, what I didn’t realize (but should have guessed) is that they also all practiced their asses off for years before making it big.
Like the examples Gladwell gives in Outliers, Page, The Edge and White were lucky enough to have gotten an early start to playing guitar. Gladwell talks about the magical 10,000 hours of practice one needs to get order to get to that ‘next level’ of success in a particular field/trade.
I haven’t done the math, but I’d be willing to put money down that these 3 musicians all hit that number early one in their lives.
Practice and book references aside, It Might Get Loud was awesome. I was fairly confident it was going to be. I couldn’t picture these 3 giants (ok, Jack White isn’t a giant yet, give him a little time) letting me down.
My favorite part in the film was when Jimmy Page starts playing the guitar on Whole Lotta Love (I think?) and the camera turns to White and Edge who both look like little kids seeing their favorite superhero in real life – eyes as big as their head with smiles from ear to ear.
Gave me chills and I wasn’t even there.

iamalwayshungry