The English Shaving Co. (commercial)
I have an awful time shaving (which is why I usually walk around woolly), and I have been thinking of going old school with a real razor for awhile. (These links are research for an essay that I'll probably never finish writing).
I'm doing it again. I need my coffee, and this'll help me find it.
Free coffeehouse wi-fi in Seattle
Stores selling products with unique designs (to make me feel special):
This is an amazing diary entry of my friend Steve who is traveling Thailand searching for himself. Enjoy.
Ten Mistakes Writers Don't See (But Can Easily Fix When They Do)
Okay, after many sleepless nights, we "finished" our wedding website. I still consider it a work in progress, but with the Marathon coming up, I'm going to put it aside for at least the next month.
The website is a bit cheesy and over the top, but that's what the Julies wanted, and what the Julies wants, the Julies gets (sometimes!).
It should work on most browsers, but I haven't created the non-Javascript page yet. So, if you have problems, try reloading. The first time you load the site, it might take a few minutes to download all the pictures.
The Photographs and Our Story are running slideshows. Hover the mouse over the pictures for controls, or let it play itself. The music selection (all Julie's!) is on the bottom. I don't know what else to say. There'll be updates over the next couple of months.
So, with too much ado, here it is:
In the best of 2005 links, I found this wonderful (1993) David Foster Wallace interview about art, TV, novelists, calculus, anti-cleverness, patheticness (but finding some way to enjoy the patheticness), hacks, postmodern novelists, philosophy, the "click," et. al. He's the bestest. It's a short and easy read, but regretably, not terribly entertaining (I'll wipe that sarcasm from my lips, thank you very much for pointing it out) (which is ironic since he makes fun of irony and sarcasm as well).
I was reading through the 2006 March 13 New Yorker, when I came across this hilarious description of the artist Barnaby Furnas. The article describes how Barnaby developed his style. I've done some searching on his paintings, and they're actually quite good (also see).
It doesn't take anything away from this description of an "artist" discovering his true calling from the New Yorker article:
Furnas surveyed the canvas and tried to explain how blood had become his motif. "Basically, I wanted to do history paintings, and battle paintings," he said. "But I was having trouble painting figures. I was particularly frustrated with the faces and the hands, and as a way of getting around that I'd paint someone being shot, and then I didn't have to worry. Like I'm having trouble with the hands--splat!"
When I first read this (before I looked up his paintings), I figured, sure, here's proof that abstract painting is just a way for middling talented "artists" to sell their works.
Here's the search for Barnaby Furnas to find more of his works.
It's alive. It's ALIVE! Our new and improved wedding website is now available to the general public.
Let me know if you see any bugs. I know it doesn't look great on small monitors (I purposefully chose to exclude those people from the full experience as a way to ridicule them for their shortcomings). And people with slow internet connections may have issues with the slideshow.
Now, on to my other projects. If only I could remember...oh, yeah. Maybe I will return to "writing," which is this mythical (or should I say mystical?) exercise whereby I pour words onto the screen, and with each word, die a little bit inside.
(And, yes, this post does count as words to ensure that the front page doesn't get filled up by inane doodles. I'm evil that way.)
I finally got around to designing Julie's website for her clinic. I went with something simple for the first draft. The next one will likely be more interesting. Take a look and tell me what you think:
After many arguments, I finally gave in and added a simple menu to Julie's Medical Practice website. I thought I was pushing the envelope by not having a menu: for me, it is easier to scroll than click. But I guess my views are not shared by the majority of people. Here's a screenshot (and this time I remember to use .png instead of .jpg):
So much for progress. You need to click the image or link to see the full website--I'm looking at you, Mom!
I don't know what it is about commencement speeches but they tend to provide the best life advice. I think it has to do with the presenters: they’re asked to look back some twenty-odd years over their (successful) lives and, with perfect hindsight, provide that tidbit of wisdom that allowed them to succeed.
JK Rowling’s Harvard commencement (via kottke) is one of those. While her second part (for the good of humanity) fell on uninterested ears, her first part didn’t. She spoke of perseverance. How she lost everything, was in the pit of depression and poverty, and discovered something that they never teach you: failure is not terrible. This understanding was what propelled her to write Harry Potter. It's always the fear of failure that is the horrible beast (the adages aren't always wrong).
Now, if only I wasn't that coward she described:
It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.
If in ten years, I look back and, having followed her advice in the first part, see the second part of her speech as meaningful as the first, then I can say that I've not only found success, but I've learned to be successful as a person.