Month: July 2007

Ingmar Bergman dies films live on.

31/072007

It was 1973 and I was just get­ting ready to head off to design school in NYC. I made many trips to the Waver­ly The­ater in the 70’s. I remem­ber that I saw my first Bergman film there, Cries and Whis­pers. I became a fan and lat­er saw Scenes from a Mar­riage, and The Mag­ic Flute in the same the­ater. It was the begin­ning of my under­stand­ing of films out­side of the Hol­ly­wood mod­el. He was part of my growth as a per­son and as an artist. Luck­i­ly we all can expe­ri­ence his films again and again always dis­cov­er­ing new places inside his films and inside our­selves. This list is from wikipedia. Check out what they have to say and then find out for yourself.

Do you remem­ber the first Bergman film you saw? Tell me about it.

Fil­mog­ra­phy

 

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creative thinking : how get to the front of the line

30/072007

I’ve been inter­est­ed in TED since Wur­man kept it to his small cir­cle of friends… one could have called it wur­man­fest. Now a larg­er vision and some very vis­i­ble spon­sor­ship has made many of the talks avail­able to those of us that don’t have thou­sands of dol­lars to go hang out with the visionaries.

Hey wait… I’m a visionary!

I don’t want to give any­thing away… let me just say : How do you get to the front of the line?
Please watch this and com­ment. I would love to hear your thoughts. I found this inspiring.

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the iphone IS amazing

30/072007

Ok. It is as amaz­ing as I thought it would be.

What a shift in how we will inter­act with devices in the future. Inter­faces for every­day use have been changed for­ev­er. Every­one talks about this “iphone” we should more acu­rate­ly be talk­ing about this device. Some­thing that we hold in our hands that can morph into what we need it to be. With the Apple inter­face patent many over­lays can be applied to a device. A key­pad, a click wheel, a remote control.

With this new method of inter­face, design­ers won’t have to clut­ter a design with every mode a device must sup­ply. When the device is a phone a num­ber pad is accessed, when it is an email client it can morph to read or write.

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Dubuque : letterpress retreat

29/072007

219PrintShopPano-07jul28.jpg

This is a panoram­ic view of my pal Peter’s new let­ter­press shop in Dubuque. He’s just start­ed get­ting things orga­nized. All the press­es are in, unless he buys anoth­er, and refur­bish­ing has begun. Plen­ty of nat­ur­al light, ter­rif­ic wood floors. It reminds me of the space Stel­larvi­sions was in for years.

I’m real­ly look­ing for­ward to spend­ing some time there. Maybe a week retreat of sorts mak­ing prints with some of his fab­u­lous wood type col­lec­tion. I thought a series of broad­sheets. I’m think­ing I may cre­ate a library of marks that I can use much like my drawings.

I’m sure that Peter will have some ideas. Try­ing them will be part of the fun.

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i am not a crook

28/072007

A strange sight while hav­ing lunch off of Rit­ten­house Square.

I look up and to my amaze­ment Richard Nixon is float­ing by. I am relieved, he’s only an advert for a his­to­ry series at the Con­si­tu­tion Center. 

Just the lat­est note on Nixon:

EDITORIAL; The Nixonian Whitewash, Scrubbed 

Pub­lished: July 15, 2007 The New York Times 

The saga of the unex­pur­gat­ed Richard Nixon
nev­er seems to end. A fresh sup­ply of 78,000 doc­u­ments and 11 1/2 hours
of Pres­i­dent Nixon’s secret White House tape record­ings — not for
those of del­i­cate sen­si­bil­i­ties — have just been released. This time,
how­ev­er, eaves­drop­ping on more of his tragi­com­ic con­spir­ings is
sec­ondary to the fact that they are part of an agree­ment to finally
legit­imize the pri­vate­ly run, pro­pa­gan­dis­tic Nixon library. 

The
library at Yor­ba Lin­da, Calif., has been turned over to the National
Archives after serv­ing for years as the cen­ter of bowd­ler­ized Nixonia.
The insti­tu­tion insult­ed his­to­ry by ped­dling ludi­crous whitewashings –
describ­ing the Water­gate crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy as a ”coup” by Nixon’s
polit­i­cal rivals fed by fake scoops pur­chased by the Woodstein
inves­tiga­tive duo at The Wash­ing­ton Post. 

That approach
has been prop­er­ly packed away as part of the price of com­ing clean to
join the oth­er 11 pres­i­den­tial libraries run accord­ing to the
schol­ar­ship stan­dards of the Nation­al Archives. 

One of the
ear­ly acts of Pres­i­dent Bush and the for­mer Repub­li­can Con­gress was to
allow the Nixon tapes and papers to be trans­ferred to Yor­ba Lin­da from
the archives’ stor­age in Wash­ing­ton. His­to­ri­ans who had to sue after
Water­gate to get at the tapes were prop­er­ly sus­pi­cious (and have hardly
been com­fort­ed by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s Nixon-class mania for
secre­cy and doc­u­ment denial). 

But Tim­o­thy Naf­tali, respect­ed as
an apo­lit­i­cal his­to­ri­an, has tak­en over at the library, promis­ing to
show­case the new tapes for the pub­lic — ”the good, the bad and the
ugly.” This is good news, and as Mr. Naf­tali deliv­ers on this mission,
the nation can rel­ish, or not, the lat­est rev­e­la­tions. In one of these,
a few days before his re-elec­tion, Mr. Nixon asked an aide, ”What
about Water­gate?” The pres­i­dent was assured no one was find­ing out
much.

Link to arti­cle here.

A sub­scrip­tion is required. This arti­cle is archived. 

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the iphone, the iphone platform

27/072007

Apple has cre­at­ed a buzz. Ok more than a buzz. Peo­ple were lin­ing up days ahead of the launch at the Man­hat­tan Apple glass cube to get their iphone. Crazi­ness aside this is a cool phone. Am I get­ting one? Not yet. Why you ask? Because I have to buy a new lap­top and the econ­o­my will only allow me one device right now.

I have scru­ti­nized the iphone the best I can with­out hav­ing the actu­al device in my hands and it is amaz­ing. Not just for the design — we can expe­ri­ence how it looks and feels and what it does. But because it is Apple’s new platform.

The iphone is a com­put­er that just hap­pens to be a phone and a con­tact man­ag­er, music play­er, a web and email device. Oh and a camera.

But more than that it is a computer.

Peo­ple say wait for the next gen­er­a­tion. Why? If you have the bucks I say buy one now.

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harry potter : philadelphia

27/072007

Tast­ing the home­made brown­ies, hot out of the oven, at Joseph Fox Book­shop in philadel­phia. At Joseph Fox the peo­ple that work there actu­al­ly read books. Go to the web­site and sign up for their mail­ings or look at the staff favorites.

Rec­om­men­da­tions are offered from an informed mind. Con­ver­sa­tions about books, their authors, and their sub­jects are wel­comed. If you live in or vis­it philadel­phia I rec­om­mend you take the time to stop by and peruse the offerings. 

It was a fun crowd on a sul­try night. Plen­ty of choco­late on hand to bat­tle the symp­toms of the dark arts. We read the book in 22 hours… it was a blood­bath as JK Rowl­ing has said. 

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