ste!!a gassaway: unpredictable thoughts

My birthday orchid seems very happy in it’s new home. It had bloomed twice in our old place in South Philadelphia where I was happy to keep it alive. It was hard work for some reason.

Now in Old City it is thriving.

I don’t think it is just the light and the water. I really think the energy here is so different. It seems to love Old City and the people that come and go in the gallery. It is joyful.

Post it notes continue to work their way into different parts of our lives. Their not so stickiness encourages us to use them in all kinds of unexpected ways. Their uniformity is another excellent attribute. Even the straight-lined challenged can line post-its up in a grid. Now that we aren’t confined to the Post-it yellow the possibilities are multiplied — by the number of new colors added.

So, what have you done with Post-it notes lately?

This is just a fabulous moment.

A view that gives scope to this ongoing disaster. There’s nothing I can say.

This video blows my mind.

This is an example of a particular freediving discipline defined as:

Constant Weight Without Fins (CNF)
The freediver descends and ascends under water using only his own muscle strenght, without the use of propulsion equipment and without pulling on the rope. Constant weight without fins is the most difficult sportive depth discipline, because of absolutely no propulsing material to go down in the water. This category needs a perfect coordination between propulsing movments, equalization, technique and buoyancy.

Gravity makes rhythm. Makes me want to go out and draw.

Of all the nasty outcomes predicted for women’s liberation… none was more alarming, from a feminist point of view, than the suggestion that women would eventually become just like men.
— Barbara Ehrenreich

It was terrific to come upon these photographs on Flickr. They are a combination of so many of my interests. They are Hopper paintings. They are wonderful detailed scale models. They are still lifes photographed with love and skill.

I especially enjoy the black and white versions. They feel like historic photos.

This vid is bouncing around on tumblr. It’s a look at how interaction can be so intuitive, and feel so real that other beings interact and experience something very real. Watching this “smart cat” play with an iPad just like it would with a string or a keyboard tells us how far our interfaces have come. How rich a good touch interface can be is very exciting.

Enjoy.

This seemed the right song for today. Enjoy.

John Maeda lives at the intersection of technology and art, a place that can get very complicated. I understand that place very well. I’m posting this talk because there is so much of it that I relate with.

This talk creates more questions than answers. It is about observing, questioning, and experimenting. Creating something new that adds to the universe. Something that brings joy. Organizing found objects and everyday things to make something totally new.

John Maeda uses imagination to inspire. Walk one day in John Maeda’s shoes. Think, what would John Maeda do with this? Open your mind to new and creative ways to move forward in whatever you do.

BTW, Mr Maeda is no longer at MIT he is now President of Rhode Island School of Design. Makes me think about how much fun it could be to be back in school. You can find out more about what he is doing there. http://www.risd.edu/president/

Bob singing in the White House. Scary to even think about it. No fire in the belly.

I really don’t have much more to say than this was fun. I want one in my neighborhood.