“A weblog about newspaper design, journalism, yadda, yadda…”

“When terror strikes, chaos reigns, people are maimed and killed. And eerie images linger in the minds and memories, making picture editing a challenging task. For many, El Pais photographer Pablo Torres Guerrero recently captured an eerie image that lingers. The picture documents the shocked and injured victims being aided by rescue workers and bystanders along the tracks outside of the Atocha station after 13 backpack-loaded bombs were detonated, killing 190 people and injuring about 1,800 on March 11 in Madrid.”

“An explanation is needed: If there is only one language in this introduction ñ the abstract, as iBlog calls it ñ then the entry is also only in that language. So far, German and English entries appear in nor particular order. Most exist in one language only, and I do not have time to translate anything. That is why this is a weblog, not a proper website. The poor readers have to do all the navigating and searching without the help of a great interface. This is not about me showing whether I am a good designer. Itís just about getting content published quickly and with as little effort as possible.”

“Perl’s extremely flexible syntax makes it easy to write clumsy code, simply because you don’t know it any better. This document describes some very basic practices I consider necessary to write serious Perl.”

“What does it take to name a color? Manufacturers do it every day for their own convenience. It helps them keep track of what they’re making and how it’s selling and distinguishes one season from another. Apparently, it also makes colors more desirable, forming associations between random hues and exotic places and objects and values and flavors and anything else that might help sell. Still, there’s something presumptuous about assigning a title to a particular color, like naming a star or a species or a mountain.” Thanks Magnetbox

“Why the Heck Would You Want to Fold an Envelope? If you are not into envelope and letter folding you may wonder why one should go to the trouble of folding up an envelope when you could just buy one from a stationery store. Well, first off, it is the very nature of hobbies that they tend not to be entirely practical. In spite of that, hand folding letters and envelopes is one of those rare intersections of decoration and practicality, where paper folding produces the satisfaction of making something useful and novel.”

“Stanley Kubrick’s films were landmark events ó majestic, memorable and richly researched. But, as the years went by, the time between films grew longer and longer, and less and less was seen of the director. What on earth was he doing? Two years after his death, Jon Ronson was invited to the Kubrick estate and let loose among the fabled archive. He was looking for a solution to the mystery ó this is what he found.”

“If everyone’s a criminal, maybe the law is wrong. That’s the contention of Lawrence Lessig, who you might just say is DJ Danger Mouse’s patron saint. Lessig, a professor at Stanford University Law School, is one of the leading advocates for changing copyright law. Via his popular blog, as well as in various books and media appearances, Lessig promotes the view that any system that makes criminals out of millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens ó like the more than 100,000 people who have downloaded Danger Mouse’s ‘The Grey Album,’ a groundbreaking but illegal mix of the Beatles’ ‘The White Album’ and Jay-Z’s ‘The Black Album’ ó is a broken system. The law must be updated to reflect the new digital reality, Lessig contends. But in that brave new digital world, how will artists pay their rent? Enter Internet pioneer Ken Waagner, who oversees all things online for the Chicago band Wilco. When a record label rejected Wilco’s ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ three years ago, Waagner and the band decided to put a streaming version of the entire album on the Wilco Web site. Commercial suicide, said music-industry conventional wisdom.”

“Almost everyone searches Google to find information, and Google quickly rewards them by displaying the information they are seeking. Thereby, Google rewards useful sites with the eyes of people who are looking for useful information. This is helping the web recover from being the wasteland of marketing hype, which the dot-come-and-gone explosion forced it to become. Google is saving the web by ultimately forcing site designers to make their sites useful again… I keep this page to help people understand how to design their sites for maximum effectivness. Please let me know if anything on this page is misleading, needs updating or additions.”

“Do you still have nagging questions in your mind about lenses, aperatures and exposure? Are you confused about circles of confusion? You might be surprised to discover that even many published textbooks present misleadingly kooky information on the subject of basic lens optics. Would you like to have a more intuitive grasp of how a lens works?”

“The task of an information architect is to create web sites where users can actually find the information they are looking for. As the ocean of information rises and leaves what we seek ever more deeply buried in what we don’t seek, this discipline becomes ever more relevant. Information architecture involves many different aspects of web site creation and organization, but its principal tools are information organization techniques developed in other disciplines. Most of these techniques come from library science, such as thesauri, taxonomies, and faceted classification. Topic maps are a relative newcomer to this area and bring with them the promise of better-organized web sites, compared to what is possible with existing techniques. However, it is not generally understood how topic maps relate to the traditional techniques, and what advantages and disadvantages they have, compared to these techniques. The aim of this paper is to help build a better understanding of these issues.” Thanks ia/

“Imagine a ‘cinema-veritÈ ‘ recreation that illuminates the action leading up to and immediately following the eternal moment in the Spanish court painter’s masterwork. 89 Seconds at Alcazaris a new project by film/video artist Eve Sussman that brings Vel·squez’ 1658 painting Las Meninas to life in High Definition digital video. The installation (a 12 minute loop) premieres in the United States at the Whitney Biennial in March 2004 as a Rufus Productions, HD Cinema, and Smack Mellon Studios co-production.” (Thanks Coudal Partners!)

“Shrink the Earth’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing remaining human ratios remaining the same, it would look like this…”

“This site is designed for visually oriented learners. It has mindmaps (study aids) which will help you understand the whole picture of complicated subjects. These enjoyable and fun maps can be used as memory triggers during study. As a visual learner, I use Mindmaps as a tool for more complete learning. You can use them too! This site has Learning Theories and Theorist’s study aids, Accelerated Learning Mindmaps, and extensive links to interesting theory sites.”

“Version control is a special kind of software used to track and manage changes. In our case, CVS version control is used to track any sort of change made to our web sites, whether it’s a single edit of one file to fix a typo, or a series of adjustments to a project where several files, folders, and graphics are added to (or removed from) the site.”