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A really interesting article on why getting mid-day might be affecting your potrential to do things. Even more interesting, i realised this was definitely my case…
Why the Manager’s Schedule Blows Creative Productivity – Meetings – Lifehacker:
“I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meeting commonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning or afternoon. But in addition there’s sometimes a cascading effect. If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I’m slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning. I know this may sound oversensitive, but if you’re a maker, think of your own case. Don’t your spirits rise at the thought of having an entire day free to work, with no appointments at all? Well, that means your spirits are correspondingly depressed when you don’t. And ambitious projects are by definition close to the limits of your capacity. A small decrease in morale is enough to kill them off.
This resonates with me deeply.”
* after a meeting yesterday i needed to add a couple of hours to perform the task i set, mostly because i needed much more concentration to start the thing and couldn’t properly evaluate the time that would be needed to finnish the modifications – i finnished work round 11pm instead of 8pm.
** a few more interesting link on the topic: Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule (original article) and Why Meetings Kinda Suck.
(Via LifeHacker.)
Technorati Tags:
process, design, workflow, organisation
July 31, 2009
Categories: coding, designing
Tags: design, organisation, process, schedule, workflow
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This morning discussing with Amandine and Anna we came across a couple of buildings which had a mini version of them beforhand their construction – either trough a natural research process or simply because investors were too scared of the novelty the building could represent and the consequent impact on the landscape…
The Barbican, by suburbanslice
the Golden Lane estate, by stevecadman
Barbican & the Golden Lane estate
Barbican is a well known huge and massive architecture programme in the center of London; after World War 2, a large bombed area has been converted into this utopian project which was reconsidering the needs of modern humans in a urban environnement. Both Barbican and Golden Lane Estate were designed by architects Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, with obvious Corbusian influences. Golden Lane is of course the mini version (somehow) of the Barbican and came earlier (1957, 1969).
Trevelyan by Jamie Barras
Keeling house by joseph beuys hat
Keeling House & Trevelyan House
Denys Lasdun designed both of them; they were built between 1957 and 1959. Keeling house is a 4 blocks of maisonettes arranged around a central service tower. In 1952, a rougher similar construction has been built, apparently more dedicated to the working class.
Balfron Tower, by Richard Parmiter
Trellick Tower, by Cristiano Betta
Trellick Tower & Balfron Tower
I’ve been introduced to those two by Ryan Gander trough his amazing loose association lectures series. When confronted with the volume of the tower designed by Ernõ Goldfinger, investors were scared this would be like a scar in the landscape (London does not have a lot of skyscraper, especially atthat time). They managed to get a smaller version built in East London, to get an impression of how it would be build.
* Process wise:
This pre production makes me think that for each of the website i am delivering there would be one, officially working, to test case the pertinence of the design and concpets as well as the solidity of the code.
* More information on the building:
Balfron Tower
Trelick Tower
Keeling House
Golden Lane Estate
Barbican Estate
October 07, 2008
Categories: collection, culture, designing, london, offline
Tags: architecture, process, research, try out
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This post is made of a few short connection in between 3 things; all of them are linked to notions like future proof, open source and hackability.
(center picture: Nicolas Nova; left: Assembling, right: Miltos Manetas )
* This morning i’ve read a very nice post by Nicolas (Pasta & Vinegar); titled buildings as flows and process, it shows a couple of pipes in the streets of North America which are depicting the infrastructure of the building itself.
* Somehow it reminded me of that post i wrote on Assembling about ‘The beauty of designing the underlying structure’ which somehow linked a large biro drawing by Amandine, a carpet by Britta Boehne, a series of paintings by Milto Manetas and my reflections on my own practice.
* This morning i was also dwelving in R-Echos archives and came across this post (original post is here): Social Networks Evil Twin Attacks which depicts an attack made on an individual using the social networks in vogue with the web 2.0, Markus the other day was speaking about this kind of concerns and issues with services like Facebook.
October 07, 2008
Categories: designing, memory, notes, thinking loud
Tags: design, hackability, infrastructure, methodology, process, structure
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There was a point at design school when I realised that I loved drawing letterforms, so much so that I would prefer to make typefaces than become a graphic designer. I think it was when I was drawing/copying Bembo letter by letter, trying to understand how it was put together. I noticed that the arch of the ‘n’ subtly curves into into the right-hand stem—all the way down into the serif.
Type Faces, an interview with type designer Kris Sowersby | i love typography, the typography and fonts blog
August 06, 2008
Categories: typography
Tags: bembo, design, process, typography
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I just twitted “an #API for humans” ( http://twitter.com/jrgd/statuses/839669544 ); one could extend this to a TOS.
API stands for Application Program Interface, a set of instruction to interact with a distant application. TOS stands for Terms Of Services, which defines what one can expect from an online service, more generally, the TOS list the rules within an online community. Applying those terms to human interaction may seems weird but it’s interesting to see that somehow it is what could be called Politeness, Respect and civilised exchange. Maybe sometimes, this should a bit more formalised, written black on white, carefully respected to ensure all parts of an interaction can expect a decent way of communicating.
June 20, 2008
Categories: thinking loud
Tags: behaviour, interaction, language, method, process
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June 13, 2008
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: generative, idea, process, project, video
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June 13, 2008
Categories: designing
Tags: geometry, poster, print, process, rules, typography
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37signals: When designing a UI we usually go right from a quick paper sketch to HTML/CSS. We skip the static Photoshop mockup.
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a bog for a fascination for the Ampersand glyph, scribal abbreviation for and. Derived from the Latin word “et.”
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system wide use of javascript via OSA; replacing Applescript – sounds good. it would be nice to even plug jQuery on top of that
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multidimensionnal array sorting in one go. look at the script, post #4
June 04, 2008
Categories: bookmark
Tags: ampersand, applescript, array, css, culture, design, development, graphic, graphicdesign, html, javascript, mac, methodology, multidimensionnal, paper, php, process, punctuation, sort, typography, webdesign
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Urs made it for real, even with a quote of W. Morris – i had the same kind of ideas (owning the producing hardware, similar to what electronest does with web design and technologies) since a while but never found enough energy to make the print workshop s
May 14, 2008
Categories: bookmark
Tags: ch, craft, design, graphicdesign, print, process, publisher, workshop
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R-Echos: how to create embroidery designs using images on your computer screen.
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R-Echos: Speaking at the first TED Conference in 1984, Nicholas Negroponte waxes prophetic on the converging fields of technology, entertainment and design.
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R-Echos: for some time, most Walker websites have been without an important branding element: a favicon.
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R-Echos: It is a simple task to control small electrical signals which are carried by the wires attached to the printer port of IBM-compatible computers.
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R-Echos: 5 years ago, the concept of working from any location seemed alien to most employers, but in todays rapidly connected world, it’s more common to find cutting edge researchers working without the constraints of 9-5 and the office life
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R-Echos: a great visualization of what the candidates are talking about
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R-Echos: An information visualization conference, the See Conference, is being held in Wiesbaden, Germany, on April 19th
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R-Echos: image of the poster found on ManyStuff
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R-Echos: Issue Magazine, another new web-based publication looking at the changing world of publishing and design
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R-Echos Custom turntables: ”
Mike Disher makes custom acrylic turntables – About 5 ye
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R-Echos Arthur C. Clarke 1917-2008, Sci-Fi Author & Space Visionary: ”
Renown science
March 20, 2008
Categories: bookmark
Tags: analysis, anayltics, animation, architecture, archive, author, blog, blogging, bones, boxes, branding, candidates, chaumont, clothes, color, conference, container, custom, dead, design, details, display, diy, drawing, economy, embroidery, etd, fab, favico, flux, furniture, future, generative, graphicdesign, GUI, identity, installation, interraction, magazine, methodology, mobility, motion, museum, pipe, player, poster, printer, process, publishing, scienefiction, screen, sculpture, signage, stream, structure, tangible, technology, topic, touch, typography, us, visualisation, vynil, water, webdesign, website, writer, writing, zeitgeist
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Pineapples contains Bromelain and have had a long tradition as a medicinal plant among the natives of South and Central America. (Eating the fruit isn’t a solution though :)
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Marmite has a great deal of Vitamin B complex – which means it contains all the B vitamins.
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Very nice dynamic layout, using javascript to fuidify the columns when resizing the page.
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todo.sh use plain text: Since it’s been around since the dawn of computing, it’s safe to say it’s completely future-proof
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show system logs, unix commands output, or images (i.e. from the internet) on your desktop or even in front of all windows.
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Bash outputs
March 08, 2008
Categories: bookmark
Tags: *****, *****, *****, *****, apple, automation, background, collection, commandline, desktop, discussion, fluid, food, gallery, gtd, GUI, hack, health, image, interface, javascript, layout, lifehack, linux, organization, pipe, pipes, process, productivity, reference, shell, system, terminal, txt, unix, wound
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For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer. (I
also have not net connection much of the time.) To look at page I
send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me.
It is very efficient use of my time, but it is slow in real time.
Re: Real men don’t attack straw men [LWN.net]
It fits perfectly my actual situation, and give me a lot of to think about, on how to manage projects, workflow, design stuff and do things more remotely.
I apologise to those who were expecting to meet me during those days, this will not be possible yet. Electronest’s work and projects are still going on – please get in touch with Pierre for updates and requests. Alternatively drop me an email, and I will get back in touch as soon as I am back.
* Thomas and Pierre websites
March 03, 2008
Categories: electronest, thinking loud
Tags: email, geek, offline, process, tool
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Tarantino and Avary decided to write a short, on the theory that it would be easier to get made than a feature… the film became a trilogy, with one section by Tarantino, one by Avary, and one by a third director who never materialized. Each eventually e
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Del.icio.us API / help. This document and the APIs herein are subject to change at any time.
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article describing a simple use of the delicious API on a mail server
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tracking software for website statistices – tehy pretty much evolved form the evrsion i use to know a couple of years back… it seems like they developped quite neat services and smart tools
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enables you to have your posts submitted automatically to social bookmarking sites like delicio.us
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a nice summary of a few features and softwares to betterise your experience with delicious bookmarks
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this gallery has both onsite and online exhibition
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an overview of the reputation economy, using delicious – the via: tag to give credits; it’s weird this system could not be automatically generated when you use the “copy this” functions.
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a kind of GTD tricks using GMail as the main tool – it’s nice to see good old emails back on tracks in the middle of RSS. it’s a “now old” media on the internet and pretty much everybody feels comfortable with it. A bit of automation oculd bring emails to
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a unique flexible identity system which help to login multiple online services and centralise information regarding personal electronic presence
February 25, 2008
Categories: bookmark
Tags: advertisement, aggregator, analytics, api, architecture, art, auckland, automation, body, book, business, car, code, coding, color, community, connection, delicious, dev, development, digital, documentation, electronic_presence, email, fashion, filter, gallery, get, gmail, google, gtd, ideas, identity, interface, internet, lifehack, login, management, marketing, microformats, monitoring, movie, network, networking, nz, optimization, organisation, photography, picture, plugin, post, privacy, process, productivity, protocol, reputation, RSS, r_echos, service, shoes, social, software, statistics, submission, tagging, tip, tool, tracking, traffic, twitter, url, vehicle, visualization, webdev, webservice, wikipedia, wireless, wordpress, workflow, __ofs
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an insight – back in the days (2005!) – on how to insert metainformation in delicious’ bookmarks
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a daily selection of website from the french newspaper Libération; via Tex Server who has been linked from them
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it’s good to see there are bigger company exploring new path of doing things – the exact same way ElectroNest decided to explore new way of managing relationship, workflow and business…
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a guide and some explanations on how to setup a FaceBook application
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an application which lets you change your boot image on apple computer
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»Internet art, net art, and networked art in relation.« A collection of conversations and interviews (with: Isabelle Arvers, Marc Garrett, Benjamin Weil, Charlie Gere, Christiane Paul, Cory Arcangel, Jemima Rellie, Sara Tucker , Jon Ippolito and Dirk De
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a semantic approach to “related tags” in delicious bookmark. Applying language algorythms to RSS feed parsing.
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Indexhibit is a web application used to build and maintain an archetypal, invisible website format that combines text, image, movie and sound. Daniel Eatock is behind this nice project aimed at easily realising online collections
February 24, 2008
Categories: bookmark
Tags: *****, *****, *****, *****, application, business, collection, datamining, delicious, design, development, facebook, feed, filesystem, hack, links, management, marketing, meta, metadata, netart, opensource, organisation, osx, practice, process, reference, research, RSS, semantic, software, tagging, theory, tool, to_read, webdesign, website, zeitgeist
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what vs. how (tecznotes)
nice writing about design process at stamen. It is nice to see Pierre and I, we are actually quite right with all the thoughts we are giving about ElectroNest and how to manage the company/work/life – it’s all about utopia! :)
(tags: design process)
internet usage statistics origami – data visualization & visual design – information aesthetics
a very nice tangible visualisation of internet traffic and flows; it reminded me the logo electronest designed for my own electronic presence on http://www.jeromerigaud.com
(tags: visualisation tangible schema statistics sculpture origami internet traffic paper)
Declutter Your Desk how to make space on your desk – everything is hidden in the shade, still accessible but not messing all around (tags: ***** desktop hardware ideas lifehack organization productivity)
The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web – a practical guide to web typography I quite liked the book of Robert Bringhurst – now, it seems like there is a nice web equivalent with the very specific issues of typography on screen (lower resolution, less control) (tags: screen typography webdesign ***** design display)
Creating a Color Scheme some explanations and insights about the color parameters and values I used to manipulate in picture editing software without knowing what it meant exactly (degreee, etc.) (tags: color howto tutorial photoshop hue degree)
How To: Separate WordPress Comments and Trackbacks WordPress with a bit of subtlety: separating comments and trackbacks (tags: wordpress hack code custom)
Koyaanisqatsi – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia “It’s not that we use technology, we live technology” – amazing and brilliant movie. it is the first of a trilogy (tags: film inspiration slow_motion technology nature society explosion)
CommentPress an amazing plugin that let’s you comment posts on a per paragraph basis; it brings feelings somehow of taking notes with a pen in the margins of a real book. (tags: wordpress comment plugin textuality discussion)
February 04, 2008
Categories: bookmark
Tags: *****, *****, *****, *****, *****, *****, *****, *****, code, color, comment, custom, degree, design, desktop, discussion, display, explosion, film, hack, hardware, howto, hue, ideas, inspiration, internet, lifehack, nature, organization, origami, paper, photoshop, plugin, process, productivity, schema, screen, sculpture, slow_motion, society, statistics, tangible, technology, textuality, traffic, tutorial, typography, visualisation, webdesign, wordpress
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Yesterday, I was wondering about Process in my early morning readings, today I’m looking at cause & consequences…
The magic number: 7.01 and how to get prepared for the worst…
Yesterday, I was wondering about Process in my early morning readings – in the flow I came to speak about Fischli & Weiss, 2 swiss artists who did the ‘How To Work Better’ a kind of process manifesto.
They also did a film most of you have certainly heard about: ‘Der Lauf Der Dinge’ (aka The Way Things Go). The video – which I loved so much since I first saw it in the Marc Bretillot’s course back in the days when I was in fine art in ESAD in Reims – is described as follow:
Film stills from Peter Fischli and David Weiss’s The Way Things Go (1987); on Youtube there’s a short extract and a link where to buy your own copy.
Inside a warehouse, a precarious structure 70-100 feet long was constructed from various items. If this is set in motion, a chain reaction ensues fire, water, gravity and chemistry determine the life-cycle of objects and things. So begins a story about cause and effect, mechanism and art, improbability and precision.
Well … yesterday, my beloved MacBook suddenly died. I mean it freezed, and then refused to boot, displaying a folder with a question mark. That seems to be a very well known issue with a certain type of Seagate hard drive with a firmware revision 7.01 – if you are the happy owner of a MacBook, I encourage you to check your serial numbers.
3 screenshots on how to retrieve your serial number. In the background a nice trick from lifehacker: Keep A Scratch Pad Of The Day, I am also a moleskine-geek which I think is a good way of envisionning vital data backup
Myself, I have been lucky enough to see the early reports about this Seagate harddrive issue and I had luckily time to backup the faulty drive. I nonetheless lost a few files and a few precious hours of rest, I also stressed a bit but I can’t help but think there‘s definitely some sort of zen to practice: learn to (better) let go and let’s things go the way things go… but as I deeply appreciate the precepts from the chinese tactician Sun Tzu (see KD01k The Art Of war), I also like to keep things ready for the worst: all I have to do now is to replace the dead and faulty seagate harddrive (there’s a PDF from Apple documenting the procedure to remove and replace a hard drive from a macbook – nothing too scary once you know how it used to be in the recent past) by a spare new Samsung, taken from a mini Porsche LaCie drive I bought in November (just in case) and re install everything back in its order.
KD01k – ‘The Art Of War’ the original text written in 3000 BC by Sun Tzu and his disciples is designed according to its own structure; a generative design principle is applied with a set of rules based on statistics and ponctuation.
* Marc Bretillot website Cullinaire Design et autres façons.
January 14, 2008
Categories: electronest, generative, memory, offline, thinking loud
Tags: apple, art, hardware, process, work, zen
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<img src=”http://textasplayground.net/assembling/wp-content/uploads/how-to-work-better-picture-collection.png” />
Richard Ziade at basement.org has a very nice article with an interresting quote about the software development teamwork and workflow. I read this article after the memo Pierre send to me via email for the (future) organisation of our company, Electronest. They are echoing each other in my mind: it’s nice to see Electronest is already able to do things quite differently.
And along my morning’s reading – there are more echoes, memories and thoughts:
Maki gave me a little piece of paper once – we were working on the Never Odd or Even website for the Serpentine Gallery with Patrick at that time. It never leaved me: first in my moleskine, and then it finally made its way to my desktop.
This is a piece by Fischli & Weiss, and the title is ‘How to work better’, below is a couple of images from my collection.
How to work better
1. Do one thing at a time
2. Know the problem
3. Learn to listen
4. Learn to ask questions
5. Distinguish sense from nonsense
6. Accept change as inevitable
7. Admit mistakes
8. Say it simple
9. Be calm
10. Smile
Ryan Gander who amongst other thing makes lectures he calls ‘Loose Association’, wrote a wonderful book ‘Appendix’ (where Stuart Baileys is a bit more than involved) and created a word: the Mitim, which I spoke upside down. Ryan Gander wrote an exquisite short article about the ‘How To Work Better’ in ‘Working it out’ – where he speaks also about the artists’ process:
Taped to the wall of my studio is an A4 photocopy of a short ten-point manifesto by Fischli/Weiss entitled “How to work better”. I don’t know who put it there, but it has been in place for at least three years. It’s a tongue-in-cheek work using a motivational statement, which is a piece of found text they subsequently enlarged and had painted on the exterior of a building as part of a public commission. I sometimes show it to students at the beginning of slide lectures, and always point it out to assistants who come to the studio.
(Maybe Maki put it here… )
There are a couple more links to follow the ongoing reflections:
- In computing, lookup usually refers to searching the internal and specially crafted database for an item that satisfies some specified property.
- ‘Appendix’ by Ryan Gander, designed by Stuart Bailey is findable at Amazon – the ISBN is 90-75380-60-7
Stuart Bailey & Ryan Gander: Appendix Appendix (Christoph Keller Editions)
- Here’s is the my re-interpretation/citation of ‘How to work better’ as a desktop background – GTD, efficiency, design and process always in mind; you can download and use, the picture size is for a (black) macbook screen (1280×800) but should be easy to crop/expand with the black zone all around.
- On the 14th of January there will be a simultaneous launch of DOT DOT DOT #15 and F.R. DAVID #2 in London and New York. Both publications will be available and accompanied by a live lecture transmitted from the other location. According to the international dateline, Cubitt Gallery in London will launch at 7pm GMT with a live talk by Stuart Bailey, DDD editor, from New York, while Dexter Sinister in New York will also launch at 7pm (12pm GMT-5hrs) with a live talk by Will Holder, FRD editor, from London.
London, 7pm CUBITT Gallery and Studios 8 Angel Mews London N1 9HH
New York, 7pm Dexter Sinister 38 Ludlow Street (Basement South) New York, New York 10002
January 12, 2008
Categories: designing, offline, thinking loud
Tags: abake, art, book, coding, design, process, ryan gander
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