When you ask a creative person how they did something, they may feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after awhile. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or have thought more about their experiences than other people have. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity.And that fact, that I am interested in everything, is what keeps me in design. I can think of no other job where I can be paid so well to be what others would call a dilettante.
This quote has been making the rounds, attributed to Steve Jobs.
I’m not sure if it is from him or not, but I do know one thing – this idea of design being a process of synthesis is absolutely correct. It’s like living in an E M Forster book (only connect…) all of your life.
In conversation, I am often asked ‘how do you know that’? Generally it’s because I noticed something that differed from the norm, examined it, and filed that information away for future use.
For people whose lives and careers go in a more linear path, this is a confronting idea. I’ve just started a project to design a 150th anniversary book for a vineyard. I met with the author and her first question was “Have you designed a book like this before?”
My answer was no.
“Well, have you designed for a winery before?”
Again I answered that I had not. She looked puzzled and concerned.
I said to her, “No, I haven’t worked in this sector before. But I’ve worked for airlines, hospitals, biotechnology companies, and newspapers. I art directed an inflight magazine, and I’ve designed the inside of courthouses. I designed the outside of your phone book and the inside of the Post Office. I’m a generalist. Anyone who’s any good at design is. My skill, what people pay me for, is that I am interested in everything.”
via Who needs a unifying theme anyway? • When you ask a creative person how they did….
Who needs a unifying theme anyway? • When you ask a creative person how they did…
Master the Art of Working Remotely – Gina Trapani – HarvardBusiness.org
I’m on a team of software engineers that is very ‘cubey.’ Lots of over-the-cube-wall interactions and walking over to someone else’s cube to chat about a coding issue. I worked physically present in the environment for several years — which solidly established relationships, etc. Then I found myself in a situation where I needed to be remote at least some of the time. I still have my computer at work, in my office cube (right in the middle of things). I set up a web cam there along with speakers. I have second cam at home, and I simply skype in to my own cube at work. Skype can be configured to auto-answer, if desired, so my ‘cube’ skype simply picks up when I dial in…
… for hours at a time.
I also pipe my home desktop onto my cube’s monitor (using VNC). This combination is very close to actually being there in the cube. People walk right up to my cube and talk to me, just like they do when I’m in the office. Because my code’s up on the screen, we can work through issues there at my desk just like normal. Similarly, people glancing at my screen can see exactly what I’m doing (coding), so there’s never a question of whether I’m actually doing my work from home.
via Master the Art of Working Remotely – Gina Trapani – HarvardBusiness.org (comments).
Esther’s Oddities
Last night Esther woke me up. I assume this was not her intention, she was talking in her sleep. Not in the normal way, where she is trying to have a conversation with me, talking in German or singing, all of which have been previous experiences, but in the “I’m on my cellphone, talking really loud in a place where I should be quiet” kind of way. “Yeah? Oh really? That’s not good. How could that happen to her?” in an above normal close conversation range is what I expect while waiting in line for a movie or at the store, not in my bed, at 2 AM. I still love her though, it is an exhausting, yet endearing quirk.
Thinking about how Esther talks in her sleep makes me very curious about
Cc:Betty
Relearing to love the bookmark
I am re-learning to love bookmark. I have been crazy about the RSS and a big fan of the bookmarklet, but I have long eschewed the bookmark as a tool of the neophyte and the luddite. I am learning the error of my ways. Bookmarks, I have found are useful for the sites that I can skim through in a couple of minutes, or site that I want to dig into, but they are not frequently updated. I know that RSS could satisfy the latter, but sometimes, getting face time with the blog layout, as opposed to the ubiquitous Google Reader interface. Part of the reason for not using RSS with a site like Boing Boing, is the sheer volume of posts. I do not want them cluttering up my feed reader. Sure, I’ll skim them, but I like to use my feed reader for blogs that consistently produce superior content (looking at you Daring Fireball). So I have returned the humble bookmark to keep track of the sites I like and produce good content, but I don’t want to have their posts in my face everyday.
One Simple Move
I guess this is kind of like Mint for moving. Given the recent job applications, we might start giving this a look soon.
Shuffle
I have been consolidating things recently, and tumblr was my latest victim. I have imported all of the lovely tumblr content into this blog. You will notice a new theme. This is to accommodate the “entry-type-specific-styling.” Yes that is a technical term. I won’t be publishing to the tumblr any more, not that I didn’t love the service, but I want to retain my iron fisted amount of control (remember all content is CC BY-NC-SA, iron fisted, right?).
Truth be told, if Dreamhost can’t get their sh*t together, I’ll be migrating this sucker off to someone else, but that is a minor technical note.