loose ends

Mew is the best band you have probably never heard of.
Pretentious art rock.
Beautifully crafted riffs & lyrics.

Porque que quando procuro por Alckmin, não encontro o site da campanha dele na primeira página de resultados?

E o Lula?

Cadê o esforço político fora da TV?

• the usual crowd was there
• beautifully executed. stunning kitchy design all over. perfect selection of location.
• great speakers
• good presentations

So I find a photo essay of Amsterdam on Slate’s frontpage. Martin Parr took some half-assed pictures back in 1998 and this rather obvious selection of photos depicting Sex in Amsterdam receives exposure.

Of course I don’t care for the whole sex & drugs image of Amsterdam. It’s part of the charm and liberal thinking I admire here. No, my gripe is with the pictures. The stale and crappy selection does not even try to bring out anything interesting in the “underworld” of “sex” here. It just states the obvious.

With photography, I like to create fiction out of reality. I try to do this by taking society’s natural prejudice and giving it a twist.
– Martin Parr

Give me a break.

If heaven and hell decide

That they both are satisfied

Illuminate the no’s on their vacancy signs

If there’s no one beside you

When your soul embarks

Then I’ll follow you into the dark

some say it’s all about the things we do not do.

Naming conventions are hell. For files, folders, variables, styles, classes, etc., there’s no intelligent way to properly name things in a hierarchical yet intelligble fashion.

Either you use declarative names that are perfectly sensible when you’re spelling them out, but which make no sense when they have to be tracked down at a later date – or you name things with hierarchical, clever mechanisms, which makes them non-human-readable and annoying.

horror-examples of two file names and two css classes that I’m currently working on:

• promo_report5 SW.psd
• Report pix B header.psd
• #body-container-foot_noimg {}
• #sidebar_sw_signup_container {}

iTunes and iPhoto intelligently do away with naming and organizing large amounts of almost-non-connected files. Photos are naturally grouped by date, while songs are naturally bound by artist / album. Intelligent playlists make it even easier to group data by other arbitrary means – and it just works.

But for real projects it makes no sense.

I try hard not to do the usual michell-bashing of things that deserve a firm punch in the face. But this is too good to be true: (emphasis mine)

A veteran Frisco art teacher says school administrators have retaliated against her because a student reportedly saw a nude sculpture during a field trip to the Dallas Museum of Art.
District officials say they are supporting a principal who reprimanded Sydney McGee over the field trip and other performance issues.
…
Ms. McGee told the board that the principal of Fisher Elementary School criticized her performance and threatened her job after a parent complained about the April field trip.
…
“You have to start somewhere when you’ve seen things you don’t believe are in the best interest of the students,” Superintendent Rick Reedy said.

I can honestly not imagine the sequence of events between a 11-year old seeing a nude sculpture –> lawsuit.

By the beginning of 2007 almost all public advertising in São Paulo will be banned. No billboards, no big logotypes on buildings, no hand-made signs in store windows.

A Câmara de São Paulo aprovou ontem uma lei que acaba com a propaganda externa na cidade. A partir de 1º de janeiro ficam proibidos painéis eletrônicos, outdoors, faixas e banners. Todo comércio e serviços, incluindo bancos, terá que reduzir as placas nas fachadas.

I am so unbelievably happy that this actually happened. Littering of public spaces in São Paulo is an awful problem. The city is already a mismatch of architectural styles and they grey-ness of any megalopolis. This decision will of course not beautify the city, but it’s a step in the right direction for Paulistas to reclaim what is theirs.

I can’t wait to see the SP photostream on Flickr show a slighly less polluted city. Seriously.

Sidenote: With 45 votes against 1, the agencies’ lobby was less than successful:

O único voto contrário ao projeto foi do vereador Dalton Silvano (PSDB), ligado à área de publicidade. “Quem perdeu foi a cidade de São Paulo. Uma cidade sem publicidade é uma cidade fria”, disse.

Já o Alonso contra-argumenta:

Dessa forma, nenhum paulistano ou visitante verá mais a seqüência de placas de qualidade criativa e de produção que se tornou tradicional na marginal Pinheiros, ao longo dos muros do Jóquei Clube. Um triste fim para uma mídia que nos últimos anos já vinha lutando contra os meios de massa, para onde se dirige a maior parte da verba publicitária, e as novas mídias, que ganham espaço pela sua inovação.

Article at Sampaist
Article at Folha de S.Paulo (behind paywall)

so very pissed with the anima mundi people now
talking about you: marcos magalhães
will go into details later
disappointed and hurt
and hoping it’s just a misunderstanding
not this ridiculos C&D shit they’re throwing
just because our site is better than theirs
this is not what we deserve
after months of hard work, back then
after being shunned by them, over and over
ridiculous shit

over&out

i need some sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

and I am in the opposite of a good mood.

…this is probably the most ADD-inducing activity I’ve ever done.

(iwonderifitisallanelaboratedisguise)

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you want to cry and you want to cry
and you want to cry
but all you feel
is empty
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1. I know the effect is more than overdone, but somewhy I’m still attracted to it. I must be a sucker for colorful things.

2. Work in progress. Not live yet, nor is what you see here finalized. Wait a few more days for a chance to lick these.

Estragon:
Well, shall we go?

Vladimir:
Yes, let’s go.

(They do not move.)

1. In music, an arpeggio is a chord where the notes are played or sung in succession rather than simultaneously. Arpeggios are usually played from the lowest note to the highest, but exceptions are not uncommon. The word comes from the Italian for “in the manner of the harp.”
2. “Arpeggi” is an unreleased song by the band Radiohead.
3. Arpeggio is a Mediterranean blend par excellence with a strong character, intense body and long, exquisite after-taste. Its thick, smooth crema remains to the last sip.

I shall stop obsessing about similar names now.

everyone should use this.

Ricky’s been suffering with the toils of finishing up the program in time. He’s been at it for three months by now, but I’m happy it’s finally coming to an end!

Back when we used to work (produce / direct / concoct) together I realized we have very distinct approaches to editing in particular. His technique for editing is (was?) all about starting at the beginning of the segment and slowly working his way forward: getting all cuts right, all sounds in place, all transitions lined up, etc. with minimal revisions when done.

Mine, on the other hand, was (is) very iterative. Start out with very rough strokes and cuts. Change the order of things, experiment and dabble to see what can come out of the material at hand. Going back and forth, layering and adapting, until the deadline looms.

Again, this was four, five years ago. I stopped editing altogether whereas he’s making it into a very successful carreer. No clue how his style might have changed in the mean time.

What was interesting, though, was how our styles did complement. Despite working on the same projects our noted creative differences always worked out with minimal conflict. ;-)

~

Parabéns! Tenho certeza que ficou do caralho o programa. Agora dorme um pouco!

I’m a sucker for lists.

The main reason I even maintain this blog is because of lists. Keeping track of events, people, thoughts.

Media, of course, lends itself to being listed. Wishlists on Amazon, recently played lists from iTunes, your Netflix queue, etc.

But one thing I’ve yet to summon courage to finally do is create a list of movies I’ve watched. Perhaps even with a hint of opinion or rating to them.

The purpose? That of keeping a list. An organized, neat, overview of the films I remember having watched, if you will. But I won’t do it. The reason is two-fold: first, because I should have started earlier (I have. Several times. But never really tried hard enough.) – and second, because it’s futile.

Professor Farnsworth:
It just so happens that I need a new crew.

Fry:
What happened to your old crew?

Professor Farnsworth:
Oh those poor sons of— but that’s not important, the important thing is that I need a new crew.

It just so happens that I had a very insightful interesting conversation with L earlier this afternoon about the merits of calling compositions by Reich & Glass (& others) contemporary classical music. It’s such a wonderful denomination, though. Oxymoronic, of course. It’s up there with soft rock, in my opinion. I have yet to see a band call their sound alt-pop, though.

Despite everything you’ve ever heard, ironing is not fun.